YMMV / Doctor Sleep

Novel

• Anvilicious: Stephen King really wants you to know how bad alcohol use is. The message is presented without qualifiers, unlike The Shining where Jack Torrance knew several other members of the English department at Stovington Prep who were heavy drinkers but didn't let it control their lives, and he specifically recalls Zack Tunney, who could drink almost an entire keg of beer by himself on Sunday night, then show up on Monday sober as a judge without fail (this actually makes a lot of sense, however, when you consider the different point of view: Jack is far more likely to find exceptions and excuses than Dan).
• Catharsis Factor: Not present in the film, but the True Knot succumbing to the measles they contracted from feeding on Bradley and dying painfully is satisfying.
• Complete Monster: Andy Hallorann, the "Black Grampa", was Dick's horrible grandfather, who gave Dick his first glimpse at evil. A child molester and sadist who enjoyed targeting his own family, Andy abused his own son before turning his attentions to Dick, subjecting the boy to molestation, cruel tricks, and genital torture. Going so far as to put out lit cigarettes on Dick's skin, Andy held the promise of his wealthy inheritance over the Halloran family to get away with his abuse, only to spitefully leave it to charity to hurt his family. Andy's spirit was so wicked that it continued to haunt Dick after Andy had died, his ghost continuing to sexually accost Dick to satisfy his hatred and lust.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: At one point Rose says that she has the high ground. Ewan McGregor ended up playing Dan in the movie.
• Jerkass Woobie: While many of the True Knot could count as the only reason they do what they do is to survive, Snakebite Andi is a stand-out example as she gets more backstory than the rest. Even Dan feels some pity for her before she cycles out, begging her Daddy not to hurt her, mirroring some of his own bad experience with Jack.

• Moe: Bradley Trevor, a victim of the True Knot, inspires a lot of sympathy and protectiveness even before his horrific fate due to his description as a Farmboy who uses his psychic powers in a lot of cute, mundane ways.
• Paranoia Fuel: The True Knot travel around by presenting themselves as middle-aged/retirees who drive RVs and spend their time at campgrounds. They're exactly the type that most people would overlook, even if they have to now have to work harder due to modernized security and surveillance of post-9/11 America. However, they're very well-funded and connected; it's mentioned in passing that they obtained their tranquilizing drugs from one of their assets in the NSA and they have hundreds of mail drops at UPS and other mailing stores. Just imagine where else they've infiltrated.
  • On a similar note, the way they track down Abra is eerily plausible. Aside from starting with Rose's vision of Abra's location, everything else they do to continue the search is surprisingly practical. They know the name of the store and that there are mountains nearby, so they use a Google Earth-esque site to narrow the potential place to only a handful of towns. Then they looked up any recent odd events in those towns and came up with the earthquake that Abra caused. This gives them not only the name of the town but the street the earthquake was localized on. Then Jimmy Numbers gets into the town's middle school site to find photos and addresses of the potential targets. Then Crow is able to narrow it down to Abra by just going to her street and observing her interaction with Billy.

Film

• Alternative Character Interpretation: It's often debated upon by viewers if the Jack that Dan confronts in the Gold Room was really Jack Torrance. Some argue that it is Jack, since the Jack of the 1980 film was shown to be a rather aggressive and angry man who resented Wendy and Danny whereas others believe it was the Overlook creating an image to drive Dan into drinking like his father. Others just believe it is Jack, but being absorbed by the Overlook made him a shell of his former self.
• Author's Saving Throw: In the Director's Cut, Dick Halloran explains to a young Danny that Jack's descent into insanity wasn't all his fault; the Overlook itself influenced him, saying that Jack "had some light in him, too, just like you got some dark. We all got both".
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After all of the pain and misery it caused the characters, Dan destroying the Overlook Hotel by overloading the boiler is immensely satisfying.
  • When confronted by the ghostly visage of his father, Dan rejects the offer of alcohol, cementing himself as better than his father.
  • Watching the True Knot cycle out painfully is also cathartic due to their abominable penchant of kidnapping children and killing them for their steam on top of torturing Bradley to death and killing both Billy and Dave.
  • After spending the entire film basically acting like the Big Bad and constantly acting smug and superior, seeing Rose actually be knocked down a peg when Abra crushes her hand when Rose snoops in her mind and especially when Dan lets out the spirits of the Overlook to feed onto her is immensely satisfying.
• Complete Monster: The Overlook Hotel itself is a sapient, pure evil structure whose only desire is to consume "steam" energy and host a party that never ends. Filled with the spirits of those who have died on its grounds, the Overlook keeps these haunted souls as its puppets and uses them to further terrorize and harm guests, bolstering the Overlook's ranks of enslaved dead. Empowered by those who "shine" the brightest, the Overlook drove the caretaker Delbert Grady to slaughter his entire family and then himself years before, and tries to replicate the bloodbath by corrupting Jack Torrance to kill his family so as to claim young Dan's steam for itself. Reawakened years later by Dan in an attempt to stop Rose the Hat, the Overlook torturously devours Rose and her steam before immediately turning on Dan and possessing him, using him to terrorize and try to cleave Abra in half with an axe before dropping its masks and revealing its true, sadistic, prideful self to the girl. The Overlook is driven by sheer cruelty and hunger for power, proving itself to be the worst threat that Dan Torrance ever faced.
• Contested Sequel: Some viewers see this film as a disappointing followup to Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, which is generally regarded as a classic. However, others favor this film as an Even Better Sequel because of its more faithful adherence to the original Stephen King novels.
• Continuity Lockout:
  • The film mentions several events of The Shining and references several scenes, but is rather vague about more specific details of that movie's plot. The viewer who did not watch the Kubrick movie can be confused (for example, the movie does not explain why Danny and his parents were at the Overlook Hotel in 1980, or the circumstances surrounding the death of Dick Halloran and Jack Torrance).
  • Also, the person who reads only Stephen King's novel The Shining will be very confused to see the Overlook Hotel still standing.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Henry Thomas playing the role of The Alcoholic Jack Torrance, who views whiskey as medicine, is a lot more wincing, considering Thomas was charged with DUI in Oregon just a month prior to the theatrical release of the film.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Other Darrin for Jack Torrance turns out to be Former Child Star of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Henry Thomas, who had worked with horror filmmaker Mick Garris, director of the 1997 miniseries adaptation of The Shining, on Psycho IV: The Beginning and an episode of Masters of Horror.
  • The movie Snakebite Andi is watching in the theatre is Casablanca. Interestingly, Scatman Crothers, two years before taking the role of Dick Halloran in the original 1980 film, played a spoof of Dooley Wilson's role from the former film in the Film Noir parody The Cheap Detective. He also played Sam himself in a short-lived TV adaptation of the film.
  • In the climax, Dan encounters Rose the Hat in person on top of the staircase at the Overlook Hotel... and it's from a certain point of view (in which he has the high ground).
  • In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation Rebecca Ferguson plays a Badass Normal MI6 agent who gets into trouble when their loyalty is suspect from her act she plays infiltrating The Syndicate, but thankfully they're a protagonist and are ultimately vindicated. In this film, she plays the leader of the True Knot and Danny notes that people like her don't fear the authorities due to the True Knot's insidious connections they have to the government institutions. In other words, The True Knot is like a Syndicate whose currency is primarily Steam and the general public is unaware of this group.
  • The film also marks the second time in Ewan McGregor's career that he's been haunted by a baby who died of neglect thanks to drug-addicted parent (the woman he sleeps with at the start of the film).
  • In the original book, Abra wards off Rose while in the form of Daenerys Targaryen, but the director decided to let Kyleigh Curran use her favorite RWBY character Emerald Sustrai instead. In the final season of Game of Thrones, Daenerys makes a Face–Heel Turn into a mad despot, burning down King's Landing and killing hundreds of people before she is killed by Jon Snow. Meanwhile, in RWBY Volume 8, Emerald pulls a Heel–Face Turn, helping the heroes save Mantle and Atlas (or rather, its people). In hindsight, it seems the change was quite appropriate.
• Jerkass Woobie: Dan Torrance. He's now an alcoholic with a temper every bit as bad as Jack's, but considering all the shit he went through as a kid in the first movie (witnessing Halloran's death, being stalked and chased by his own father who intended to kill him, and then losing him shortly afterwards) left him with severe trauma on top of losing his mom Wendy, losing his friend Billy after he's forced by a True Knot member to kill himself (right in front of him, no less), losing his ally David (who was Abra's father) after another True Knot member stabs him in the heart before witnessing said member kidnap Abra herself, having all the ghosts of the Overlook possess him and force him to go after Abra and then dying horribly by burning the entire hotel with himself still inside it, it's hard not to feel bad for him.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Twofold. Some fans of Ewan McGregor only went to the film because of his casting, while some RWBY fans went to see it just to get the context for the Emerald references.
  • Presumably threefold, with the climax taking place in the Overlook Hotel.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • For the movie, a ton of prequel memes have been made after the casting of Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance:
    • The very first shot of the trailer of Dan sporting a beard, prompting many to respond with "General Kenobi!"
    • Dan responding to Jack's "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!" with "Hello there".
    • There's also "Heeeeere's Obi!" in reference to how Dan is possessed like his father was. Yes, he carries and uses the axe, too.
    • "It's over, Rose! I have the high ground!"^note Specifically when Rose the Hat sees Dan wielding an axe at the Overlook's main staircase
  • "Hey did you know RWBY is in Doctor Sleep?"^note Some RWBY fans watching Doctor Sleep for the first time tend to be surprised by the references in the film and post about it on r/RWBY...much to the amusement of the people there who have already seen the movie, leading it to become an inside joke on the subreddit to use it to respond to old news
• Moral Event Horizon: The True Knot as a whole are already beyond the horizon, but of those that stand out:
  • Rose the Hat establishes her ruthlessness by luring and killing a little girl with the Shining.
  • Barry the Chunk pokes fun at Bradley's baseball playing skills as he assists in torturing him to death.
  • Crow Daddy kidnaps Abra after coldly murdering her father as revenge for the death of his group.
  • Snakebite Andi forces Billy to commit suicide before succumbing to her wounds.
  • The ghost of Jack Torrance more or less reveals that he always despised Danny and Wendy, thus making his actions in the first Shining film all the more deplorable. Though it is debatable on whether that truly was Jack or if it was just the hotel playing tricks.
  • The Overlook itself is already presented as a malevolent force responsible for a number of tragedies in its long history, but it crosses it when after feeding on Rose, it possesses Dan into going after Abra to kill her.
• Narm:
  • Some have felt that the make-up used on Henry Thomas to transform him into Jack Torrance is this, saying that it looks like someone doing a Jack Nicholson cosplay, and that it would have been more effective if the character was kept entirely out-of-focus so that the make-up would be less distracting. Others have pointed to this shot as an effective example of how the film could have done this.
  • The frequent use of shots designed to mirror those of The Shining, particularly in the final act, can be distracting to the point of detracting from the actual story. It's particularly noticeable when certain shots are repeated - for example, every time an axe is swung, the shot is a replica of Jack swinging the axe at the door in the "Here's Johnny!" scene. The scenes in which Rose stops to watch blood rush from the elevator doors and after the Overlook ghosts repopulate the hotel have been compared to the Shining sequence in Ready Player One.
• Narm Charm: The scene where Rose overpowers Dan after he tries to axe her in the shoulder. The way she plays with his arterial wound and takes in his steam (and enjoying some whiskey-flavored steam) can come across as hammy, yet amusing from the innuendo implied with her dominating him.
• One-Scene Wonder: Henry Thomas appears as Jack Torrence/"Lloyd" the Barkeeper for a single scene where he attempts to tempt Dan to fall off the wagon and give up on helping Abra. The scene is generally agreed to be one of the most memorable in the movie. Though technically Thomas appears in a few other quick shots recreating scenes from the original movie as flashbacks, but those are only seconds long.
  • Similarly, many of the ghosts from the first film show up only briefly in the finale but manage to make a very strong impact, most notably the famous Grady sisters who even get to repeat their iconic line.
• Squick: The murder of young Bradley is played out quite graphically and with extended focus on his tortured suffering.
• Too Cool to Live: Billy and Dave.
• The Woobie: So many in the movie.
  • Bradley. The poor kid is tortured to death by the True Knot in a horrifyingly graphic and nauseating sequence.
  • Abra. She's stalked by a murderous cult due to having "the shining", watches Bradley be tortured to death by said cult, loses both her ally Billy and her father David to two True Knot members before she's kidnapped by the one who killed her father and loses her other ally Dan after he stays behind to destroy the Overlook Hotel and a comment from True Knot leader Rose implies that more True Knot members will hunt her down in the future. Poor girl needs a hug pronto.
  • Billy. He befriends Dan and assists him in killing multiple True Knot members, only to be killed by one of them in turn via being telepathically forced to kill himself by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, all while he can do nothing to fight back. The fact that this happened in front of Dan makes it worse.

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