Doctor Sleep has been praised by Stephen King himself as a worthy adaptation of his book of the same name, but it still makes some big changes to the source material. The much-anticipated sequel to Stephen King’s bestseller, The Shining, hit the bookshelves in 2013, while the sequel hit theaters early November 2019. Critics and audiences were mixed on Doctor Sleep, and its box office performance was subpar too.

The film version of Doctor Sleep, directed by Mike Flanagan, follows Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) decades after the horrific events at the Overlook Hotel, as he battles alcoholism and tries to make a new life for himself. He travels up the east coast and settles in a small New England town, where he works nights at a hospice and attends AA meetings with new friend, Billy Freeman. As he begins embracing a sober lifestyle, Dan’s Shine starts to come back. When he meets Abra, a teenager who can Shine brighter than he ever could, he is forced to revisit the demons of his past in order to stop a band of renegades out to devour anyone who can Shine.

While the backbone of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep remains in tact, there are some major changes that condense the 531 pages into a manageable two and a half hour film. Here are the biggest changes to the book in Doctor Sleep.

Abra’s grandmother

In the Doctor Sleep book, Abra’s grandmother, Concetta, is a major character. She believes in and supports Abra’s Shining abilities while Abra’s parents do not. Likewise while she is dying of cancer, Dan visits her and receives important information about his own past and abilities. In the movie however, Concetta is essentially non-existent. She is mentioned in an off-hand comment about being sick in the first quarter of the movie, but is never seen or heard of again.

Reducing the amount of characters is a common occurrence when a film is being adapted from novel. Too many onscreen characters run the risk of confusing the audience so many directors opt for merging storylines instead. Unfortunately here, by not adding Concetta in Doctor Sleep, we lose a powerful element the Abra’s story. The grandmother’s belief in Abra’s Shine is an important balance that counters the parents’ disbelief. We don’t get to see that family dynamic nearly as much as we do in the book.

When Dan visits Concetta in the Doctor Sleep book, she tells him of the affair she had with his father when she was younger. Incidentally, Abra’s mother is also Dan’s half-sister, making Abra his niece. In the movie though, Dan and Abra are not related whatsoever. In fact, Abra refers to him as “Uncle Dan” when they’re sitting and talking together on a park bench only so that anyone near by won’t think it weird that a man and young girl are together.

Leaving an element like this out of the Doctor Sleep movie doesn’t take away from the story as a whole, but it does affect the way the audience empathizes with the characters. Adding subplots like this in novels is a way to create deep character arcs that help the reader connect. The studio ran the risk of an under-developed relationship here, but lucky for them, it works out in the end.

The members of the True Knot die differently

In the book, the cult-like baddies travel across the states feeding on people’s steam. Along the way however, the majority of them contract measles and end up dying from it. Some of the others split with the group leaving Rose the Hat with a skeleton crew of devoted followers. The Doctor Sleep movie, however, condenses the True Knot members’ deaths into one big shoot out in a state park near the end of the film.

This decision also falls into the category of reducing the amount of characters to make it easier for the audience to absorb the larger picture. In the novel, the True Knot was a sprawling, underground organization with reaches into the highest echelons of society. But ultimately Doctor Sleep dampens the real terror they represent by turning them into a violent pack of nomads.

The Overlook Hotel

Arguably one of the biggest changes, the Overlook Hotel blew up at the end of The Shining from a faulty boiler, meaning the building did not even exist in Doctor Sleep. The final battle scene takes place in a campsite where the hotel once stood and Abra is not there at all. But during the final scene in the movie, Dan walks through the building to “wake it up”. He brings the audience on a tour of the unforgettable sets and resident ghosts from the original movie.

This was something director Mike Flanagan had to work around whether he wanted to or not. He could have easily made mention of the hotel blowing up after young Dan and his mother leave, but instead he chooses to leave leave the Overlook in Doctor Sleep for its symbolic power. It’s both a literal and figurative representation of Dan’s demons, and seeing the hotel again serves as a way to unite both The Shining and Doctor Sleep, almost 40 years apart.

Dan Dies

In the Doctor Sleep book, Dan’s character arc comes to fruition as he celebrates over a decade of sobriety and has a new family. We also see him attending Abra’s birthday party. In the movie, however, Dan rigs the boiler to explode in a bid to save Abra, destroying the Overlook Hotel and himself with it. Instead of visiting Abra with his family, he visits Abra as a ghost. A move like this is very interesting, especially considering that Stephen King is still alive and could presumably write more for the story. By killing off Dan at the end of Doctor Sleep, the filmmakers are effectively shutting the door to continuing the story’s legacy. And ironically, that in turn opens another door that would instigate even more changes to the storyline if more books or movies are created.

When Hollywood changes plots and character details of beloved books, more times than not it makes fans disappointed. In this case however, Doctor Sleep was enjoyable to both fans of the book and newcomers alike. Some of the changes that Warner Bros. and Mike Flanagan made were drastic, but it did not take away from the story as a whole. In fact, it actually tightened the story up somewhat, cutting characters and events to make the story more streamline for viewers. One gigantic question remains though. If King decides to write a third novel for The Shining series, how will production companies make a movie out of it? The timelines in the book and movie are completely separated now with Dan’s death with no foreseeable way to reunite the two adaptations, making a Doctor Sleep movie sequel all the more difficult.

Next: Doctor Sleep: What The Shining’s Old Lady In The Bath Means