Fans of last year’s Doctor Sleep have undoubtedly heard that Mike Flanagan has just released his own director’s cut. Flanagan added approximately 30 more minutes of content to the existing film, bumping it up to a run-time of three hours.
Doctor Sleep is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. It’s the sequel to King’s iconic novel, The Shining. Doctor Sleep follows a grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), who suffers from alcoholism just like his father, trying to escape his shine. Eventually, a girl with an even more powerful shine than his named Abra (Kyliegh Curran) finds Dan. They work together to stop The True Knot, a powerful cult led by the menacing Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), who hunts down those who have the shine in order to take it from them.
While it is a well-respected film, it’s well known that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining varied drastically in some ways from the original source material. With Doctor Sleep, Flanagan set out make a sequel that would honor both versions of the story. With his director’s cut, Flanagan decides to strengthen the stories of its three main characters — Danny, Abra and Rose the Hat.
Doctor Sleep: Theatrical Version vs. Director’s Cut
When Dan Torrance is introduced in the theatrical cut, he has truly hit rock bottom. He drinks too much, parties too hard, and sleeps with strangers. The director’s cut takes it one step further to drive home how far gone he truly is. Flanagan expands the scene where Dan wakes up in a strange woman’s bed. He attempts to quietly leave in the morning and take the money out of her wallet on the way out. His conscience gets the best of him when he sees the woman’s young child. In the new scene, Dan briefly talks to the boy. Later in the director’s cut, he wrestles with his shame from that morning. Moments like this demonstrate Dan’s motivation for his redemptive sacrifice in the end of the film.
Abra’s back story is expanded upon as well. The theatrical cut of Doctor Sleep brushes over Abra’s family for sake of plot. But the director’s cut fleshes out Abra’s relationship with her parents. A flashback shows a young Abra playing piano in her family home, along with giving present-day Abra more scenes with her father. The latter is important to show a positive father figure, unlike Jack Torrance in The Shining.
The director’s cut also aims to up the scares by way of The True Knot. Early in the film, Rose the Hat is luring a little girl with the shine. Her fate is implied in the theatrical cut but shown more plainly in the director’s cut. Flanagan even expands upon the already brutal death of Baseball Boy (Jacob Tremblay). And with knowing what the cult is capable of, Flanagan’s decision to dive further into The True Knot’s plan to capture Abra in the director’s cut makes the group truly terrifying.
The director’s cut of Doctor Sleep adds a handful of other little details along the way, like new title cards. But it’s the larger elements of expanding the stories of Dan, Abra and The True Knot that make the Doctor Sleep director’s cut better than the theatrical version.
More: Doctor Sleep Box Office: The Shining Sequel Didn’t Deserve To Bomb
