A Review of the new teaser trailer for “Doctor Sleep”

By: Adam Cook

For the longest time, fans of Stephen King’s The Shining have asked the author if he would ever write a follow up story to one of his most celebrated titles that turned into an iconic film from an iconic filmmaker. Thirty-Six Years later, King would answer fans’ wishes by releasing Doctor Sleep, which focuses on an adult Danny Torrance and his gift. It would be inevitable that the book would turn into a film adaptation as most of King’s writings do. Today, we got our fist look at the Doctor Sleep movie with a brand-new trailer.

Directed by Mike Flanagan, who is no stranger to Stephen King film adaptations as he directed 2017’s Gerald’s Game, the movie follows the story of Danny (played by Ewan McGregor), who is still dealing with the traumatic events that happened at the Overlook Hotel as he is spending his days working as an orderly and encountering a young girl named Abra, who has similar psychic powers as he does. He teams up with her to take on a cult known as The True Knot, whom stay immortal by preying on children with these special abilities.

The trailer starts with Danny sitting up on his bed in an attic looking at a dark wall with the word ‘Hello’ written in chalk and a smiley face inside the O. There is a cutaway shot of him getting ready for the day and noticing more words written with the same smiley face in the O. A crash and crumbling of the wall wakes Danny from his bed and he falls to the floor, only to get up and see a hauntingly familiar word written in the cracks, ‘Redrum.’ From there you see shots of him talking to Abra about their special gift, various shots of what appears to be members of The True Knot as they surround a woman on a dark beach with only light coming from a fire, encountering a little girl in the woods and all too familiar images from the first movie as the blood coming out of the elevator, the woman in the tub and Danny seeing the bathroom door and poking his head through the hole that was axed by his father.

The trailer clocks in close to three minutes but provides enough dark atmosphere and chills to give fans hope that this will live up to their lofty expectations. The film will be distributed by Warner Bros, who is also distribution another Stephen King film to theaters prior to this, the highly anticipated second chapter to IT. Doctor Sleep will be released in theaters on November 8^th, which will give fans time to catch their breath before being scared again.