In its haste to once again have Danny Torrance battle The Overlook Hotel, Doctor Sleep kills off mesmerizing villain Rose the Hat way too quickly. In adapting Doctor Sleep for the big screen, writer/director Mike Flanagan was tasked with a delicate balancing act. Flanagan set out to both create a satisfying adaptation of Stephen King's source novel, and craft a worthy sequel to Stanley Kubrick's iconic movie version of The Shining, all that despite King's well-known hatred of Kubrick's film.
For the most part, Flanagan was successful in this mission, with Doctor Sleep receiving great reviews from both critics and horror fans. Unfortunately, the population of moviegoers at large wasn't interested for whatever reason, leading to a terribly disappointing box office performance for the Shining sequel. One can only hope Doctor Sleep will follow in the footsteps of The Shining itself, which took some time to really catch on and become the beloved classic it is today.
One of the best parts of Doctor Sleep is its main villain, Rose the Hat, played by Rebecca Ferguson. Rose is strikingly beautiful, charmingly charismatic, and ruthlessly determined to protect her makeshift family, making for a deadly combination. It's Rose who leads the incredibly graphic murder of Bradley "baseball boy" Trevor, and it's Rose who is shown to be an enormous threat to Abra Stone and her new friend Danny Torrance. Things seem to be leading to a final confrontation with Rose, but instead, she kind of gets brushed aside.
Doctor Sleep Killed Off Rose the Hat Way Too Early
Rose the Hat sustains her youthful appearance and long life by feeding off the "steam" produced by those possessing The Shining, and her prey never survives the ordeal. While Abra is extremely powerful, Rose is too, and after an angry Rose consumes her entire reserve of steam, she's even more of a threat to Abra and Danny. She follows the pair to The Overlook Hotel, due to Danny's belief that the only beings powerful enough to take Rose down are the Overlook's malevolent ghosts, which used Danny's psychic powers to corrupt Jack Torrance in The Shining.
Rose arrives, and things look poised for a massive showdown. This starts to happen, as Rose goes to battle with Danny and Abra inside Danny's mind, which takes the form of The Shining's hedge maze. When Danny's attempt to mentally trap Rose fails, he unleashes the ravenous Overlook ghosts upon her, who greedily consume her own steam and quickly end her life. The remainder of Doctor Sleep then pivots to a final battle between Danny and the Overlook itself, with Rose reduced to an afterthought.
While the scenes in The Overlook Hotel - which was blown up in King's Shining novel, but left standing in Kubrick's film - are enjoyable fanservice, they also fail to do any type of justice to the conflict between Rose, Abra, and Danny that dominated the majority of the film. Instead, Doctor Sleep reduces Rose to a secondary villain at the last minute, pushing her out of the way to focus on the Overlook's spirits, which while iconic, are not what the rest of the story was about. Rose the Hat was one of the best horror villains in recent memory, and she deserved better than serving as a mid-level "boss battle" before the real fight with the Grady Twins and the woman in Room 237. It's one of Doctor Sleep's few real missteps, and points to the difficulty of trying to balance two competing ideas.