Doctor Sleep is the latest Stephen King adaptation, based on the 2013 novel of the same name The novel was a follow up to The Shining, and followed the adult Dan Torrance as he confronted his past – and The Overlook Hotel. But with various details left out of Stanley Kubrick’s film – how much of Doctor Sleep is accurate and follows the plot of the novel?
***Warning: BIG Doctor Sleep spoilers***
Doctor Sleep is about Dan Torrance (played by Ewan McGregor) as he struggles with alcoholism.
He is clearly traumatised by the events at the Overlook Hotel, and, when we first meet him in the novel, he is still a child and still struggling to get the monsters from the hotel from his head.
Dick Hallorann, the hotel’s chef, appears to Danny through their shine and helps him to create lockboxes in his mind to contain the ghosts, which he begins to do.
However, as an adult, he is still struggling with anger and alcoholism – just like his father – and drifts from state to state.
Dan decides to go to New Hampshire to settle down and gives up drinking, starting work at a tourist attraction and at a hospice.
His psychic abilities begin to resurface due to his putting his drinking to one side, and he becomes able to comfort dying patients with the help of a cat, Azzie, earning him the nickname ‘Doctor Sleep.’
The major differences between the movie and the novel of Doctor Sleep (Image: Hodder & Stoughton/Warner Bros)
Elsewhere, Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) is born in 2001, and establishes a telepathic bond with Dan, though unintentionally.
She witnesses the death of a young boy through her shining, watching the boy be killed by a group called The True Knot, who feed on the psychic essence of children – known as ‘steam.’
Their leader, Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) realises her presence and formulates a plan to kidnap her and keep her alive so she can produce a limitless supply of steam.
At this point, there are some departures from the original which are fairly major.
In the novel, members of The True Knot begin to die off from measles contracted from their last victim, and believe Abra’s steam can cure them.
This is not depicted in the film, however the following sequence covers the death of the True Knott characters while remaining true to the novel.
Following this, Abra asks for Dan’s help and reveals to her father and family doctor that they need to formulate a plan, which they go along with.
Dan and Billy (Cliff Curtis) foil and kill a raiding party sent by Rose to kidnap Abra.
In the movie, Billy sadly dies too when one of the group, who has her own psychic abilities, convinces him to kill himself, however this is not included in the book.
There are further departures from the book after this point, and much of the ending is completely different.
In the novel, at this point, Dan visits Abra’s great-grandmother and telepathically learns that he and Abra’s mother Lucy are half-siblings from the same father: Jack Torrance.
Concetta dies, and Dan takes her disease steam into himself, while the True Knot start to split up and Rose is left with fewer followers to go and hunt Abra.
Dan meets young Abra (Kyliegh Curran) in Doctor Sleep (Image: Warner Bros)
None of this is included in the movie, and the raiding party sees the death of every member of The True Knot, meaning Rose must fight Abra and Dan alone.
From this point, the movie and novel start to join back together, and Dan and Abra use their telepathic powers to bait Rose into going to The Overlook Hotel.
However, something very different is that, in the novel, the site of The Overlook is now a campsite for the True Knot, and the hotel is no longer there.
At this point, the film acts as a sequel to the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining, where Dan and Abra must visit the hotel itself in order to ‘wake it up’ and let the ghosts deal with Rose.
In the movie, Dan and Abra lure Rose in and call on the monsters and ghosts of the hotel to kill Rose, after Dan has sat opposite his father at the bar and had a conversation about drinking and ‘taking your medicine.’
Abra and Dan must fight the evil Rose The Hat, played by Rebecca Ferguson (Image: Warner Bros)
He opens the lockboxes in his mind to allow the ghosts to take over Rose, and eventually they do, but they also infect him in some way as well, meaning he takes on his father’s spirit and takes an axe to kill Abra.
However, he is able to snap out of this and eventually sits next to the boilers, which he has set to blow.
Later, we see Abra in her home talking to Dan, saying she knew he would get out.
But it becomes clear they are speaking telepathically, and it is not obvious whether Dan escaped the fire, though it is heavily implied that he died.
The novel ends wildly differently to this, as Dan released the diseased steam he collected from Concetta to the remaining True Knot members, which kills them, as well as freeing the ghost of the Overlook manager Horace Derwent to kill the last member of the gang.
Dan must return to the Overlook Hotel, despite this not being in the original Doctor Sleep book (Image: Warner Bros)
Abra and Dan then fight Rose with a psychic struggle, until they, with help from Billy and the ghost of Jack Torrance, push Rose off a platform to her death, with Jack waving goodbye to his son having found peace.
The epilogue then shows Dan is celebrating 15 years of sobriety and Abra’s birthday is being celebrated, but he warns her not to walk in the path of alcoholism and anger which is in the family, before he comforts a dying colleague at the hospice.
While there are quite some differences with the film, director Mike Flanagan has said he got Stephen King’s “blessing” and convinced him to allow the project to take place thanks to the scene at the bar, which included aspects of The Shining which were missing from Stanley Kubrick’s film.
Doctor Sleep is in cinemas on October 31