Warning: SPOILERS for Doctor Sleep.
A lot of questions were answered in Doctor Sleep., but the movie also introduced an entire set of new questions. Directed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House), Doctor Sleep pulls off the magic trick of adapting the 2013 novel by Stephen King while also simultaneously being a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Although King famously hates Kubrick’s The Shining, the author very much approves of Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep despite the necessary changes that had to be made to reconcile the story with the events in Kubrick’s film.
Doctor Sleep reintroduces fans to Dan Torrence (Ewan McGregor), a man with psychic powers called the Shining. Dan survived a tragic winter at the Overlook Hotel when he was five years old where his father Jack (Jack Nicholson) was possessed by the ghosts in the hotel and tried to murder him and his mother Wendy (Shelley Duvall). Now an adult, Dan suppressed his abilities but he is unaware that there are predators in the world for people who possess the Shining: a crop of vampires called the True Knot who are led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and eat the “steam” of those gifted with the Shining. When Dan befriends a girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) who has Shining powers even greater than his own, she becomes the next target of the True Knot. To protect Abra and put his own demons to rest, Dan makes a final stand and confronts Rose at the source of all of his trauma, the Overlook Hotel.
Thanks to excellent performances, Flanagan’s sure-handed direction, and a compelling recreation of the sets and characters of The Shining, Doctor Sleep is both a poignant sequel to Kubrick’s classic film that also delivers as a top-drawer horror-thriller. But even with a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, Doctor Sleep can’t go as in-depth and King’s novel and the film still leaves some plot points hanging as well as some major unanswered questions.
10. What Happened In The 30 Years That Turned Danny Into An Alcoholic?
Doctor Sleep’s prologue establishes that young Danny (Roger Dale Floyd) and his mom Wendy (Alex Essoe) moved to Florida after they escaped the Overlook Hotel. Dan was still traumatized and it turns out the evil spirits from the Overlook were able to haunt him thousands of miles away. But thanks to the guidance of his mentor Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly), Danny was able to learn to psychically imprison the ghosts in boxes. At the end of the prologue, Danny seemed confident that he had control over his enemies and indeed, he managed to capture every Overlook apparition that came looking for him.
However, Doctor Sleep time jumps to 2011 to find the adult Dan has turned into a homeless alcoholic who lives off the grid - what happened in the interim years? His mother died, which hurt Dan deeply, and the film establishes that aging, alcohol, and drugs can dull the Shining, but did Dan’s life fall apart when it seemed like, as a child, he had gotten his demons under control? Instead, Dan ended up echoing his father’s alcoholism and anger issues, which led him to try to get his life together and start fresh in Frazier, New Hampshire.
9. Why Was The Overlook Hotel Only Condemned And Not Demolished?
One of the most surprising things about Doctor Sleep is finding out that the Overlook Hotel is still standing. Despite two instances of the winter caretaker going insane and committing gruesome murders, somehow the hotel wasn’t outright demolished. Instead, its empty (and haunted) shell simply stood abandoned in the Colorado Rockies for almost 40 years. Was the company in Denver that owned the Overlook so financially strapped that they just left the dilapidated hotel alone instead of paying to have it torn down?
Obviously, the real answer to the question is that the Overlook wasn’t demolished so that Doctor Sleep could have its third act confrontation there and be able to utilize The Shining’s iconography. But it requires a suspension of disbelief that the Overlook remained in one piece and that even the roads leading to it were still passable. Notably, the Overlook was destroyed at the end of Stephen King’s The Shining novel and the Doctor Sleep book’s final battle happened on its former site where the True Knot made their base - this makes a lot more sense.
8. Why Didn’t Dan Move Out Of That Room And Into His Own Place?
After Dan moved to Frazier, he was befriended by Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis) and invited to take over an empty room in Billy’s apartment building. The simple dwelling would suffice for a penniless drifter like Dan was in 2011 but after getting a job at a hospice, Dan continued to live in that room for the next eight years! Why didn’t Dan move out and find a nicer place? After nearly a decade, Dan had settled in Frazier and held down two jobs: caring for the dying at a hospice and running the train at Tiny Town. Dan must have saved his money - which was evident since he had the means to finance his cross-country mission to protect Abra - but why did he continue living in that dingy old room?
7. Do Animals Also Have The Shining?
In the hospice, there is a cat named Azzie with the peculiar ability to know which patients are about to die. Does this cat also have the Shining? The film treats the cat and his abilities as special and even the patients know that if the cat visits their room, it means their time has come. However, the cat’s unusual gift remains undefined. Even when Dan regained his Shining after getting clean, he didn’t investigate whether the cat was ’like him’, or whether animals can also possess the Shining.
6. What Did Abra Find In Rose’s Mind?
One of Doctor Sleep’s most spectacular sequences is when Rose, who also has Shining abilities, used astral projection to fly across the country and find Abra in her bedroom - only to have the young psychic turn the tables on her. As Rose was incapacitated by her hand stuck in a file cabinet, Abra used her powers to ender Rose’s mind and pillage it for information. But what did Abra find out about Rose? The vampire who feasts on steam panicked as the girl invaded her mind but the movie doesn’t reveal any details about what Abra discovered, nor does the film’s plot and Rose’s eventual defeat hinge on that information.
5. Did Danny And Billy Alert The Authorities After They Found Bradley Trevor’s Body?
After Abra told Danny about the True Knot murdering Bradley Trevor (Jacob Tremblay), Dan and Billy went on a road trip to find Bradley’s body and recover his baseball mitt, which Abra could use her Shining on to discover more about the vampires. Dan and Billy found the True Knot’s campsite where they murdered the boy and they exhumed his body to recover the glove. This was a key component in their plan to take down the vampire clan, but hopefully, Dan and Billy also took the time to notify the authorities where Bradley’s body was found for the sake of his family. Further, Bradley’s father was played by Danny Lloyd, who played the young Danny Torrance in The Shining.
4. How Did The Shine Vampires Miss Danny?
When Rose finally came face-to-face with Abra and Dan Torrance at the Overlook, she asked a very good question: how did the True Knot not know about Danny before? Rose herself is particularly gifted at sensing children with the Shining but somehow the existence of someone as powerful as Danny went undetected for over 40 years. It’s one thing that Rose couldn’t sense the adult Dan; a person’s steam becomes dulled by age and chemicals like alcohol, but the True Knot should have been able to find Danny when he was young, particularly since they were all in Florida at the same time in the early 1980s after the events of The Shining.
3. Who Were The True Knot’s Other Victims?
When Abra, Billy, and Danny killed off the rest of the True Knot, Rose realized she’d have to face two powerful psychics all by her lonesome so she did what she initially refused to do and opened up all the canisters of steam she had stockpiled to boost her powers. Because it was becoming harder and harder to find young children with the Shining to feast on, the True Knot had to become stingy with their previous victims’ steam. However, it turned out Rose possessed the life essence of a number of past victims - but who were these kids and how long had Rose held onto all of that steam?
2. Why Were Some Ghosts Still Able To Escape The Overlook At The End?
After Dan unleashed the Overlook’s ghosts from the boxes he’d imprisoned them in, they swarmed over and killed Rose before the hotel took possession of Dan and sent him to kill Abra. However, Abra was able to restore Dan’s personality long enough for him to go to the boiler room and burn the Overlook down. Presumably, this finally put the hotel’s spirits to rest, but the last scene of Doctor Sleep revealed this isn’t the case. Abra found her bathroom haunted by the rotting old woman from Room 237, which she calmly dealt with. But how was that ghost still able to haunt Abra away from the Overlook? Did the other ghosts also escape? If the ghosts are still on the loose, then what good did burning down the Overlook ultimately do?
1. Why Didn’t Jack Nicholson Return For Doctor Sleep?
Probably the biggest surprise of Doctor Sleep was the return of Jack Torrance (played by Henry Thomas) or, at least, someone who resembled Dan’s dead father but introduced himself as Lloyd the bartender. It was certainly eerie to see Jack Torrance back with his early 1980s hairstyle, even if a different actor was playing the part. So, why didn’t Jack Nicholson return for a cameo in Doctor Sleep since Jack Torrance is one of his most iconic roles?
Though he never publicly announced it, Jack Nicholson has retired from acting and has stayed out of the public eye since 2010. Director Mike Flanagan knew Jack was approached to cameo in Ready Player One, which also homaged The Shining, and Jack turned it down so, out of respect for the legendary actor’s retirement, Flanagan didn’t attempt to woo him to appear in Doctor Sleep and ultimately recast the role. Now, even though Nicholson is 82 years old, digital de-aging technology could have made him resemble himself in his early 40s, but another possible reason for Jack Nicholson’s absence is that he’s rumored to be dealing with memory loss. Either way, Jack Nicholson’s presence as Jack Torrance was definitely felt throughout Doctor Sleep.
Next: Doctor Sleep’s Ending Explained In Detail
