Here’s “The Shining” deep dive you need to prep for “Doctor Sleep”

If there is one thing you should know about "The Shining", it is that the classic Stanley Kubrick film isn't just scary — it is also, in its own odd way, defined by a hopeful perspective on life and death. "; young child Danny Torrance having visions of elevator doors opening up and releasing waves of blood through the hallways; Danny riding his tricycle through the hotel and encountering two young girls, both ghosts, who urge him to "come play with us, forever and ever"; the word "redrum" being repeated by Danny until his mother realizes that it is "murder" spelled backward; dutiful and timid wife Wendy reacting with terror as she sees that her husband spent the countless hours in his study not writing a book, as he claimed, but retyping the sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" thousands of times. Yet despite its famous scary moments, "The Shining" is at its core an optimistic film — or, at least, as optimistic a movie as a cold, cynical filmmaker like Kubrick was capable of creating — and that fact is one of many that needs to be understood by anyone who wants to fully appreciate the long-awaited sequel "Doctor Sleep". While the movie could have settled with using "hotel built on a Native American burial ground" as a simple excuse for why the building was haunted, Kubrick gives Jack throwaway lines about "the white man's burden." Kubrick's "The Shining" seems to transcend the typical trappings of horror because Kubrick himself had never and would never again make a so-called "scary movie."