With Doctor Sleep’s Awakening, you can now stream the sequel to the horror milestone Shining with an Amazon Prime subscription. The sequel takes a different approach to Kubrick’s masterpiece and captivates with melancholic horror.
With The Shining, master director Stanley Kubrick has made one of the best horror films of all time. The film adaptation of the Stephen King novel produced unique images, such as Jack Nicholson’s manically contorted face in the doorway, the two ghost sisters in the hotel corridor or the elevator from which a wave of blood slowly flows.
You can now stream Doctor Sleep’s Awakening, which is based on King’s literary Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, on Amazon Prime. The film impressively demonstrates that a great classic can be meaningfully reimagined without trampling on the original.
Stream Doctor Sleep with a Prime subscription
Doctor Sleep’s Awakening mixes the past with melancholy drama on Amazon
In the sequel, Ewan McGregor plays the adult Danny, who discovered the supernatural gift of The Shining as a young boy in the original. In the present day of Doctor Sleep’s Awakening, Danny is a broken alcoholic who, despite his abilities, wanders aimlessly through life searching for inner peace. Then a young girl appears who possesses the same gift and is hunted by a cult that inhales the Shining like a drug.
Watch the German trailer for Doctor Sleep’s Awakening here:
After an unsettling opening, the film splinters into individual pieces after several time jumps, which director Mike Flanagan (Haunted Hill House) slowly puzzles together into a melancholy, eerie odyssey. Even though the adult Danny Torrance is at the center of the plot, he is surprisingly not the main protagonist.
The character, played with traumatized vulnerability by Ewan McGregor, is much more decisive for the film’s various moods and motifs. At the same time, Doctor Sleep’s Awakening is not a pure horror film. Flanagan occasionally conjures up nostalgic horror directly from Kubrick’s iconic imagery. Otherwise, however, his vision unfolds unpredictably between personal drama, straightforward thriller and bizarre fantasy.
On the one hand, there is the surreal cult delirium, with jumps into other bodies or from one location to the next. On the other side is the emotional horror that brings characters together because of past or impending family tragedies. And when the finale sees a return to the beginnings, goosebumps are inevitable.
