Starring Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Fergusson, Kyleigh Curran, Cliff Curtis

Directed by Mike Flanagan

Warner Bros., out now

When recovering alcoholic Dan Torrance starts receiving mysterious messages from a child in distress he has to confront his past as means of settling a debt.

In the movie’s opening shot we hear the first bars of Wendy Carlos’ score to The Shining, making it very clear that this is a movie sequel. Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) succeeds in managing to be both a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s movie of The Shining and as an adaptation of Stephen King’s sequel novel. The clever bit being that they are two very different sources and Flanagan’s screenplay manages to take the best of both while also creating his own final act. It’s a tricky mix and yet it is satisfying, indeed for me a far more satisfying conclusion than the novel.

It’s impossible to discuss the movie without going into spoilers about the book, so here’s your warning…

Spoilers follow

OK, the novel concludes with Danny being very much alive, as is his best friend Billy and Abra’s father. Dan discovers that he genuinely is Abra’s Uncle Dan and it’s a case of happy families living happily ever after. In the movie, Dan, Billy and Abra’s father all have very different fates, and instead of the finale happening at a campground where the Overlook Hotel once stood, it now happens inside the hotel, a meticulously rebuilt version of Kubrick’s set.

You see, whereas King torched the building in his novel, Kubrick left it standing, and narratively available for Flanagan to use, alongside the movie-invented maze instead of the novel’s topiary. Another point of contention with King (he famously disliked the movie) was the death of cook Dick Hallorann, which King fixes in Doctor Sleep by having him alive. In the movie, we still get a performance of Hallorann, but because he’s dead, it doesn’t upset what we’ve seen in the film.

In addition to the recreated hotel, other characters are brought back to life, recast as opposed to CGI rejuvenations. Who’d have ever imagined that ET’s Henry Thomas (Elliot) would one day be playing Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance!

Ewan McGregor is credible as grown up Danny, turning a corner after hitting rock bottom. He’s solid throughout the picture, and there’s good support from the movie’s villain Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson – Mission: Impossible film series), leader of the True Knot, a group of modern day vampires who suck the life force (or ‘steam’) from their victims. In the movie’s most upsetting scene they kidnap and torture a young child (Room’s Jacob Tremblay), pulling no punches so that there’s never any affinity with their feral ways. Inevitably they get their comeuppance but with casualties along the way.

This isn’t Flanagan’s first King adaptation, he also looked after Gerald’s Game, and he gets great work from Kyliegh Curran as feisty teenager Abra Stone and Cliff Curtis (Fear the Walking Dead) as Dan’s saviour Billy Freeman. It’s not that scary, certainly not reaching the heights of the director’s Hill House, but the spook factor is upped once inside the Overlook, and for a 150-minute film it’s never boring.

Verdict: A surprisingly efficient merging of sources to create a satisfactory follow-up to the horror classic, its weaknesses are more down to the source material, which already gets a good work over. It’s not in the same league as Kubrick, but far better than expected, and with an obvious passion for both the movie and novel that have come before. 8/10

Nick Joy