Summer 2019 may have been Hot Girl Summer, but mark my words, Autumn 2019 will be Stephen King Autumn. This weekend alone, It Chapter Two blasted into theatres with a record-setting opening (second only to It, its 2017 predecessor), and The Institute, King’s new novel, continued to earn favourable reviews. Meanwhile, the final trailer for Doctor Sleep has landed, and it promises a film as spooky and provocative as one would expect from the King empire.
Published in 2013, Doctor Sleep is the sequel to The Shining, King’s iconic 1977 novel, which Stanley Kubrick adapted into an equally iconic movie in 1980. A masterpiece of modern horror, The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, who finds himself driven to the brink of insanity by the supernatural happenings at the Overlook Hotel, where he works as a caretaker. Jack is joined at the hotel by his wife and his son, Danny, whose gift (or curse) of “the shining” enables him to peer into the hotel’s violent past.
Doctor Sleep sees an adult Danny Torrance (played by Ewan McGregor) plagued by the same alcoholism that afflicted his father, as well as by traumatic memories of his time at the Overlook Hotel. Danny’s resolution to sober up gets complicated and creepy when he meets Abra, a young girl with similar psychic abilities. The trailer nods at some of the visual cues that have lodged The Shining in our cultural consciousness, including the eerie twin girls and the hotel elevators inundated with blood.
Director Mike Flanagan (of The House on Haunted Hill fame) has avowed that, although he owes a huge inheritance to Kubrick’s film and the King legendarium, Doctor Sleep is “its own thing.” Flanagan went on to say, “The heart and soul of the movie, and the reason we wanted to make it at all, was really about this new story between Dan and Abra.”
However, even as Flanagan aspires to create a standalone film, he shares Kubrick’s vision in one department: his aversion to “jump scares.” Chances are, The Shining didn’t make your heart race because it startled you—instead, the slow burn of tension and dread are the source of the psychological thrill. According to Flanagan, Doctor Sleep promises more of the same mentality.
Catch Doctor Sleep in theatres on 8 November.
Adrienne Westenfeld is the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversees books coverage, edits fiction, and curates the Esquire Book Club.
