Doctor Sleep

I really liked Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's sequel to The Shining (one of my favorite King novels), so I really hoped that the film adaptation would be good.  I had the chance to see a Thursday preview last night and I think it is fantastic.  Dan Torrence (Ewan McGregor) is all grown up and is just as traumatized by the events at the Overlook Hotel as you would imagine he would be.  In a flashback, the ghost of Dick Hallorann (now played by Carl Lumbly) helps the child Danny (now played by Roger Dale Floyd) lock the ghosts of the hotel into boxes within his mind.  As an adult he has become an alcoholic to suppress his "shining" so Dick intervenes in his life once again and tells him to get sober.  Dan moves to a small town, joins AA and stops drinking, gets a job as an orderly at a hospice, and begins using his "shine" to comfort the dying patients which earns him the nickname "Doctor Sleep."  Meanwhile, a sinister cult led by Rosie the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) has found a way to become immortal by feeding off of the essence of children who "shine" as they are tortured to death.  Now that Dan is using the "shining" again, he is able to communicate telepathically with a girl named Abra (Kyliegh Curran), whose "shining" is even more powerful than his.  Rosie detects Abra's powers and her cult eventually tracks her down which alerts Dan.  Dick meets with Dan one last time and tells him that, just as he once helped him, Dan must help Abra.  This leads to an epic confrontation back at the Overlook Hotel.  Some people may disagree with me but what I liked most about this movie is that it strays a bit from the source material and returns to Stanley Kubrick's version of events so it is not only a sequel to the novel but also a sequel to the film (which I think is a masterpiece).  I really enjoyed all of the callbacks, especially the use of the music from the opening credits (based on Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz) which gave me chills.  I think McGregor is at his best when he is confronting the ghosts of his past at the hotel, particularly in an incredibly poignant scene with his father (now played by Henry Thomas).  Ferguson is also excellent and I found her performance to be terrifying but strangely compelling.  The visual effects are quite good and really bring the book alive (I sometimes had a hard time picturing in my mind just what was happening when the cult members would "feed" off the children in the book).  This is as unsettling as I hoped it would be and I highly recommend it.