Doctor Sleep is a sequel to both The Shining film and novel, and it achieved this by changing and explaining The Shining movie’s ending. Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep was published in 2013 and is a sequel to one of his most famous works: The Shining, published in 1977. The story follows adult Danny Torrance as he deals with the trauma from that winter at the Overlook Hotel and with a new menace that is targeting those with exceptional “shining” abilities.
Director Mike Flanagan had a big challenge when adapting Doctor Sleep to the big screen – not because of the source material but because of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. Although regarded by many as one of the greatest films ever made, Kubrick took a lot of liberty with the source material and his version of The Shining can’t be considered an exact adaptation of King’s novel. Because of this, Doctor Sleep has been sold to the audience as both a sequel to the novel and Kubrick’s film, something that was possible by rewriting the ending of Kubrick’s film and bringing elements from the novel to give both The Shining and Doctor Sleep more clarity and coherence.
Kubrick changed a lot of things from the novel and left many details intentionally ambiguous, prompting countless analyses and interpretations on the film itself, the ending, and the source of Jack’s downfall. But Doctor Sleep, on its quest to unify The Shining’s novel, film, and its own source material, went as far as to sacrifice its own ending to explain what truly happened to Jack at the Overlook and what “the shining” is really about, essentially rewriting The Shining’s ending in the process.
The Shining Was All Supernatural
The way Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) was presented in The Shining film made him look like a man who just needed a little push to finally lose his last bits of sanity. Jack was a recovering alcoholic with anger issues and an aspiring writer who saw the job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel as a good opportunity to work on his novel without distractions. Jack and his family – wife Wendy and son Danny – got trapped in the hotel after a heavy snowstorm, and Jack’s breakdown has been attributed to “cabin fever”, the writer’s block he was struggling with, and/or his mental health. As for the ghosts, they were there to “reclaim” him as he was the reincarnation of a previous caretaker, as implied by Delbert Grady when telling Jack he had “always been the caretaker”. The book, however, has a very different explanation for the events of that particular winter.
The evil forces that live in the Overlook Hotel are the result of past tragedies, among those the murder of the Grady family – unlike the film, where it’s all rooted on the hotel being built on an Indian burial ground. This power is manifested as a vaguely sentient malevolence that not only uses the ghosts of those who died there to claim more lives but also makes objects like the topiaries in the garden come to life. The Shining is a story about supernatural forces (both the hotel and the “shining” itself) and their influence on those who live in the hotel, and that’s where the real danger lies – not inside Jack’s head as the film made it look.
The Overlook Hotel Was In Control Of Jack In The Shining
In the novel, the Overlook’s initial plan was to possess Danny, as what it really wanted was to take his power – or his “shine”, which was quite powerful back then. However, the hotel couldn’t take over Danny, so it shifted its focus to Jack, who already had a dark side that made it easier for the hotel to take control of him. The hotel enticed Jack with the history of the hotel through a scrapbook (which makes a very brief appearance in the film but has no relevance in the story) and started messing with him by frustrating his desire to work on his novel. Through the ghosts of Lloyd (the bartender) and Delbert Grady, Jack fell back into alcoholism and anger, and he was manipulated to kill Wendy and bring them Danny so the hotel could “feed” from his power. Danny managed to briefly break Jack free from the hotel’s possession, with Jack telling him to run right before the hotel took control of him again.
Doctor Sleep does justice to this part of The Shining by swapping roles: Danny is possessed by the hotel at the end, and Abra is the one who momentarily brings him out from this “possessed” version. The film even takes the dialogue from The Shining novel with Abra stopping Danny from killing her by telling him that’s not him and it’s only a “mask and a false face” worn by the hotel. Furthermore, the way Danny walks towards Abra - axe in hand - is reminiscent of Jack’s in The Shining film, bringing together the film and the novel and making it clear to the audience that what made Jack turn against his family was not his own mind but the hotel taking control of him through his dark side.
Was Answering The Shining In Doctor Sleep A Good Move?
As mentioned above, Doctor Sleep sacrificed its own ending to do justice to The Shining novel. In the Doctor Sleep book, Jack’s ghost helps Dan and Billy kill Rose the Hat, and Jack waves Dan goodbye, having finally found peace. Dan and Abra keep in touch and he continues working at the hospice, comforting dying patients in their final moments. The film, on the other hand, gave Dan Jack’s original ending by having him possessed by the hotel and this one exploding with Dan still inside. In terms of Doctor Sleep serving as an extension of The Shining, this decision works as it gives some needed clarity to what happened with Jack at the Overlook Hotel and what the “shining” really is, especially for those viewers who are not familiar with the novel.
However, this decision also backfires as it doesn’t let Doctor Sleep be its own story. The film was used to correct Kubrick’s “mistakes” and give The Shining its real ending, instead of letting it tell Dan’s story as it is. Doctor Sleep is an adaptation of the novel of the same name until Dan enters the Overlook Hotel, which is when it shifts to being a sequel to Kubrick’s film. Explaining what the “shining” is about was definitely a good move (and one that does justice to both novels), but whether changing the endings was a good decision or not will be up to each viewer and how acquainted they are with The Shining - both the novel and the film - and its supernatural elements.
Next: Doctor Sleep’s Ending Explained (In Detail)
