The Shining needed a sequel as much as, say, Citizen Kane would have done, but since the never-ending mine of Hollywood horror material that is Stephen King had already written one, it was bound to happen. And one wishes they hadn't. King may have intensely disliked Kubrick's highbrow, eerie adaptation of the original novel, but then the author has never been the most critically astute judge of what makes a classic film. Doctor Sleep certainly isn't one: it works perfectly well as a gory riff on the themes of psychics and psychos, but that's about as far it gets. Ewan McGregor as the now middle-aged and alcoholic Danny Torrance, the boy who survived his father's possessed rampage and has lived haunted by the trauma ever since, is as watchable as usual, as is Rebecca Ferguson as the chilling leader of the group of demonic killers after Danny and a young girl who has even more potent psychic powers than him. It's not uncommonly derivative by modern horror standards, but would have been well advised to leave the sacrosanct original alone.
6/10