The Dark Half
A steven king inspired movie. Not familiar with the novel it’s based on, but I might be familiar with the story it came from.
If you don’t know The Running Man was based on a book written by Richard Bachman, a pseudonym for King. King used the pseudonym to write things outside of the Horror genre I believe, the only problem is when Hollywood decides they want to adapt a Richard Bachman book into a blockbuster that would star Arnold Schwarzenegger it would be in their best interest to hype the movie as a Steven King joint, so I’m sure they slowly spilled the beans that there is no such person as Richard Bachman, who is in fact Steven King. This made the pseudonym worthless so in a very dramatic event Steven King actually announced to the world that Bachman was dead, even gave him an obituary.
This is where the movie kicks off. Timothy Hutton plays the Steven King like novelist who made some serious cash cranking out trashy novels under the name George Stark until someone threatens to reveal the secret unless he gets some of the Stark money (so maybe that’s why King had to revel himself to be Bachman?). He’s makes it an event officially killing George Stark and even giving him a tombstone, which triggers the story of the film.
Timothy Hutton plays Thad, a novelist and technically a twin (by genetics because in the movie Thad himself is the father of twins), but before he was born Thad being the stronger twin absorbed his weaker twin in the womb, which formed into a cancer-like tumor upon birth (interesting enough, Steven King’s obituary for Richard Bachman states he died of brain cancer).
The story goes that Thad did not fully absorb his twin brother some of himself was left behind and what was left behind took the form of George Stark and is going through great lengths to revolt his untimely death (although technically he died in the womb). From here the movie is the twist third act of Malignant (A third act that makes that movie but not this one)
The Dark Half is a combo of Steven King’s writing a George Romero’s directing, which for any horror fan means this is a must see. I have to admit I’m far more entertained by what seems to be the truth in the story than the overall movie itself. There are sections of the story that are too drawn out to be interesting. Noted a lot of these scenes consist of the far more famous now then he was then, Michael Rooker. The problem is that Rooker plays a sheriff investigating a series of murders that point directly to Thad as the killer. As far as he is concern, this case is opened and closed but he’s not being a dick about it. I’ve seen Rooker play dick cop and he does it well, but here he’s a nice guy who is just doing his job and it’s not his fault that what remains of Thad’s twin are setting him up. In fact, Thad was the unlikable ass in this film. He had every right to hate the cops and be angry about a series of crimes he knew he did not do but they are telling him he did, but even if as the viewer I understand why he’s upset, him being upset made me dislike him. Weather it was because Hutton played it wrong or because Rooker did, I was disliking the wrong guy in this film and I knew I was, which made scenes were Hutton is being harassed by the cops long and stupid.
I wish I could say this was a better picture because it’s the collaboration of two masters of horror, but like I said the extra background I happen to know about the fictional characters possible development is what made it totally watchable for me
