Trailer Tuesday: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

The blood-gushing elevator. The snowbound maze. The REDRUM lipstick scrawl. The twins in their matching blue dresses. The shine of clairvoyance. We’ve been here before.

I’m ready to go back.

The Overlook Hotel, as we’re told in the opening pages of Doctor Sleep, burned to the ground during Jimmy Carter’s time in the White House. Some, like me, have checked into Stephen King’s haunted hotel for many repeat visits. The bolder ones have even stayed in Room 237....but those guests are most likely dead now.

Doctor Sleep, the sequel to King’s 1977 The Shining, came as a nice gift to his readers six years ago and now it’s going to be splashed across the big screen next week, ready to help us lose even more sleep. It stars Ewan McGregor as the grown-up version of Danny “Redrum” Torrance and his face looks suitably haunted for someone who had a literal hell of a childhood.

Though I still have Doctor Sleep in my to-be-read queue (I’m slowly working my way through my shelf of Stephen King unreads, which is different from his “undeads”), I hope to get to it soon. As always, I’ll stick by my old adage book first, then movie...though I must admit this trailer makes the movie look awfully tempting and my resolve may just splinter like an axed bathroom door (plus, I have a lot of other goddamn books in my TBR pile right now).

Adaptations of King’s work have always been hit or miss (often leaning toward the latter), but the trailer for director Mike Flanagan’s version has just enough visual and aural allusions to both the novel and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cinematic masterpiece to make me believe it will be worth the admission price. I’ll be checking in soon.

Trailer Tuesday is a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.