In both versions of The Shining, the Overlook and its hypnotic power aren’t the beginning of Jack’s darkness. It’s not about Dan outrunning the ghost of his father and his demons, it’s a story about Dan being terrified that he’ll become his father. It unites all the movie’s loosely connected parts into a brilliant, complicated whole. But for this cut of Doctor Sleep, it acts like a thesis statement. It’s a small line, and in another movie, it might feel like a throwaway. “And your daddy had a little bit of that light too,” Dick says. The Overlook fed the darkness in Jack, just like it fed on the light in Danny.

Dick says the version of him that tried to kill Danny in the hotel wasn’t all Jack. This connection between the two characters is literalized in the director’s cut, when a version of Dick Hallorann, the Overlook cook who taught young Danny about “the shining,” explains what happened to Jack. In the beginning of the Doctor Sleep film, Danny, now going by Dan, struggles with alcoholism, just like his father did. Flanagan never paints Jack as a victim, at least not completely, but he reveals him as a whole person. Flanagan’s director’s cut changes the story by finding room for empathy in Jack Torrance. Even the few moments where he struggles to fight the Overlook’s influence in the original book are presented with the inevitability of his failure hanging over his head. But in most versions, Jack is reduced to his ending, and the attempted murder of his family. The relationship between protagonist Danny Torrance and his father Jack is a key element in every version of The Shining and Doctor Sleep.

The new cut provides a more empathetic theme for the entire Shining series, both the movies and the books. And its additional 30 minutes of footage improves on Flannagan’s already-impressive work. has also released the director’s cut of the film. For the home video and streaming releases, though, Warner Bros.

The theatrical cut of the film wasn’t much respected or well-reviewed, but it was an incredible display of storytelling ingenuity, an entertaining movie, and the only working connection between two horror classics.īut the time devoted to retelling and retooling bits of Kubrick’s original movie keeps Doctor Sleep from developing many themes or thoughts of its own. So Flannagan decided to rebuild the original movie by recasting every principal role, recreating Kubrick’s set for the eerie, haunted Overlook Hotel, and committing to a massive process of cinematic reenactment. Alongside the fact that the book wasn’t exactly King’s most beloved or necessary work, Flannagan was also attempting to rebuild a bridge between King’s original novel version of The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s classic film version, which King has spent decades denouncing. When director Mike Flannagan set out to adapt Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep into a movie, he took on a nearly impossible task.

The shining and doctor sleep