By The trailer for the The Shining follow-up Doctor Sleep dropped yesterday, and - surprise surprise - it looks very intensely creepy. Ewan McGregor is Danny Torrance, 40 years on from the extremely rubbish family holiday which ended in axes through doors and a chase round a hedge maze. Fancy an official synopsis? Here it comes!
"Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognising that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality.
"Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past."
The trailer never leaves you in any doubt that this is a Shining sequel, either. Director Mike Flanagan - who directed The Haunting of Hill House and Gerald's Game, and is definitely not the same man as Mickey Flanagan - has recreated some parts of The Shining for Doctor Sleep, though where and when they'll turn up is anyone's guess at the moment. Some of them are nods at some of the most famous shots and scenes in all of cinema; some of them are deeper cuts. Let's get the obvious ones out of the way first.
'Redrum'
Redrum as actually - check this out - murder written backwards. Woah.
The lift full of blood
Interestingly, this is one callback which actually uses the original footage from Stanley Kubrick's film. "The way that it happened when Kubrick made it, the way the blood wraps and coils down at the edge of the elevator frame and bounces back on the walls – we can't recreate that," Flanagan explained to Digital Spy. "So we had to dig back into the original footage."
The carpet and the tricycle
No confirmation that adult Danny gets about on an enormous trike as yet, but fingers crossed.
The twins
Those Grady girls are back and as intensely creepy as ever.
The old lady in the bath
Otherwise known as Mrs Massey, she apparently came to the Overlook to have an affair and ended up staying in room 237 for a lot longer than anticipated.
The axe-hole in the door
That wants sanding down and repainting, chief.
That opening sequence hovering above the car
Compare and contrast this with the original shot.
The score
That haunting figure from Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind's score is deployed very nicely indeed toward the end of the trailer.
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