A pretty noticeable trend in big #brand blockbusters these days is sequels that acknowledge the passage of time between the new film and classic original. They’ll talk about “legacy” or “succeeding where the past failed” as an attempt to add thematic meaning in franchise products capitalism has deemed must exist forever. Think Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And sometimes the results are legitimately progressive and great! Thinks Creed.
Apparently this trend trend applies to horror movies, too. A few years ago we got a Blair Witch sequel in this “legacyquel” vein. And now the first sequel for Doctor Sleep takes us back to the terror of Stephen King’s The Shining.
To be fair, Doctor Sleep the book is also a sequel to The Shining. And the movie seems to be following its plot fairly closely. Ewan McGregor plays grown-up Danny Torrance, an alcoholic traumatized by his father’s murderous rage at the Overlook Hotel all those years ago. He’s pulled back into action when he learns of an evil cult targeting children who have the same psychic “Shining” power as him, children like Kyliegh Curran’s Abra Stone.
While officially not a sequel to the excellent 1980 film version of The Shining, which King himself famously hated, it’s hard not to notice all the allusions to Kubrick’s masterpiece in this trailer. You got your backwards letters, little kids of tricycles, guy poking his head through a chopped apart wooden door, and elevators full of blood. Plus new actors are playing old characters suggesting we’ll get flashbacks to that time period. I would kill my whole family for a frosty Jack Nicholson cameo.
Doctor Sleep releases this November. Between this and It: Chapter Two it’s shaping up to be a scary good time to be a Stephen King fan at the theaters. For more here’s what we thought of Castle Rock and pour one out for the cat from Pet Sematary who “mysteriously died” after the film’s debut.