I will admit that I had some doubts before I saw Doctor Sleep. How would they be able to adapt a book that I liked and at the same time make it a sequel to a movie I disliked? Would it even be possible? Little over 150 minutes later I know that not only is it possible, Mike Flanagan has done a great job doing it. Sure, he had to take some liberties with it since King’s book and Kubrick’s movie didn’t really tell the same story and especially the ending was a bit different but he still manages to deliver a good movie.

We do get a lot of flashbacks from The Shining and it’s eerie how well these scenes look. All except the scene where the blood pours out of the elevators have been recreated. And it’s not just the Overlook that we get to revisit. We also see Danny as a 5 year old as well as his parents Jack and Wendy. I especially like Alex Essoe as Wendy. She even sounds like Shelley Duvall.

So, the flashbacks work but so do the current and main story of the movie. Ewan McGregor is great in the role as the adult Danny and young Kyliegh Curran delivers a strong performance as Abra but my favorite is Rebecca Ferguson as Rose The Hat. I’ll even go as far as to say that her casting is, if not the best, one of the best ever done in a King movie.

Rose The Hat is the leader of The True Knot, a group of traveling vampires who feeds off the Shine that they get from killing people with the same abilities that Danny and Abra have. And now Rose has found Abra and she is hungry! Abra now has to put all her faith in Danny and that they together can defeat The True Knot.

The movie follows the book pretty closely with the exceptions that are needed to get it to be a followup to Kubrick’s movie version and I like it. The only thing I’m missing is more info about the members in The True Knot. We do find out more about a few of them but some are just bystanders and having read the book I know there are more to them. But that is just a small bump, Doctor Sleep is a really good movie!

Doctor Sleep is a great adaptation to King’s book and followup to Kubrick’s movie. The cast (specially Rebecca) is great as are the flashbacks to the original film. Mike has even thrown in a few nods to The Dark Tower. They are small but they are there if you know what you’re looking for.