Ewan McGregor as grownup Danny Torrance fights his own demons and others in this meandering follow-up to The Shining
Did The Shining need a sequel? Well it’s got one now, adapted by director Mike Flanagan from Stephen King’s 2013 followup novel. It is more than half an hour longer than the Stanley Kubrick film, although it seems more than that – laborious, directionless and densely populated with boring new characters among whom the narrative focus is muddled and split. Your attention is distracted from the central figure, who might otherwise have been an actual object of fascination: Danny Torrance, once the kid in the Overlook hotel, pedalling his trike around the eerily endless corridors and eventually pursued by his axe-wielding dad, unforgettably played by Jack Nicholson. The Kubrick movie, from 1980, notoriously disliked by King, is a stylistic influence on this sequel, which references the big moments. (King has an executive producer credit. So perhaps he came round to it.)
Now Danny (forthrightly played by Ewan McGregor) is all grownup, unemployed, homeless, addled with alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the grisly finale in the snow at the end of the first story. His mum, Wendy, died not long after they moved away; young Wendy is played in flashback by Alex Essoe. Adult Danny is still burdened with the telepathic power of “shining” (past tense “shined” not “shone”), but he has cultivated the art of shutting up his Overlook demons in imaginary boxes in his mind.