For some moviegoers, "The Shining," Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film about a psychic little boy nearly murdered by his father in an old hotel, is the Picasso, Beatles and Muhammad Ali of horror _ it was and always will be the best. The film has its detractors, notably the man who wrote the source-novel, Stephen King, but there's no dismissing its iconic visuals: the twin Grady girls, the blood-filled elevators and, of course, the rotted ghoul officially known as Old Woman in Bath.
Nearly 40 years later comes the sequel, "Stephen King's Doctor Sleep," based on the author's 2013 novel. If you were a fan of the first film, "Doctor Sleep" will be everything you feared _ and not in a good way.
For starters, it's not really a sequel, except in a purely chronological sense. Our hero is Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor), whose near-death experience in the Overlook Hotel has turned him into an alcoholic. His old friend Halloran (Carl Lumbly, replacing the late Scatman Crothers) is now a friendly ghost who dispenses good advice. Aside from that, though, "Doctor Sleep" may as well be an entirely new story.
