The Dark Half (1993) Review

The Dark Half (1993) Review

 

George Romero found the most success in his career when he directed movies about the zombie apocalypse, starting with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, but his collaboration with Stephen King on Creepshow became a cult hit, so when Romero brought King’s novel The Dark Half to the big screen, you’d think it too would’ve been a hit, but the movie took two years to be released after completion and was a bomb when it eventually came out, which isn’t really fair, because The Dark Half, pardon the pun, isn’t half bad. 

It opens like a David Cronenberg movie, with a young boy named Thad Beaumont getting brain surgery and the doctors discovering a twin inside him that Thad absorbed before he was born, its eye blinking at them, located on his brain. They remove it, and once Thad is grown up and has become a successful writer, the twin comes for him (his “Dark Half”, if you will) in the form of George Stark. Thad created the pseudonym (fake name/person) of Stark to publish his darker thrillers, but after a con artist discovers the truth, he “kills off” Stark and even has a fake grave and headstone for him.

After the Cronenbergian opening it becomes more of a supernatural murder mystery, with Stark coming to life and killing people close to Thad, including his editor and agent, but he discovers Stark can’t hurt him because he is him, essentially, and he uses this knowledge to try and stop him, because Stark is trying to take over his life. 

Timothy Hutton plays both roles, and does a great job in both. Thad is a reserved, caring family man, whereas Stark is a slick, silver-tongued killer, and all the scenes with Stark stalking his victims and executing them are brutal and frightening. It’s never explained how Stark came to life, but it isn’t really necessary. The idea of a fictional being coming after you is definitely an unsettling one.

Local law enforcement think Thad is the killer, but he pleads guilty, and the sheriff, played by Michael Rooker, is skeptical at first, but eventually believes Thad more and more as he investigates, discovering all the things Thad describes his pseudonym as (dark hair slicked back, leather jacket, drives a black car) are true. 

The way this story came about was when a fan discovered Stephen King’s real-life pseudonym, Richard Bachman, which he used to publish more than one novel per year in the 1970’s and 80’s. After the big reveal, he wrote the novel The Dark Half, which clearly pulls from a lot of his personal thoughts and feelings, but injected with a purely fictional concept. I was a little surprised to find King wasn’t involved in the making of this movie, especially after his close collaboration with Romero on Creepshow. 

George Romero wrote and directed The Dark Half, and like Timothy Hutton, did a great job managing both roles. He creates a lot of interesting imagery, especially with sparrows, which play an important role in the story. As has already been seen in Creepshow, Romero is capable of making a small animal in great numbers very disturbing, and he does so again here, in particular at the end of the movie. It also has moments of the well-known Romero horror-violence, but not as many as his other, more popular works, which brings me to the negatives.

I wouldn’t call The Dark Half one of Romero’s best efforts. I like the concept, but certain things just felt repetitive after a while, such as Thad sitting down to write and being possessed by Stark, making him scribble crazily on sheets of paper then stop and look at it in horror. The pace is quite slow as well, which I wouldn’t cite as a flaw, necessarily, but it definitely felt to me like the editing could’ve been tighter, mainly in the second act. The ending, too, which I won’t spoil, is great, but stops quite abruptly and lacks much resolution. Again, not necessarily a flaw, but something that could’ve been improved.

The Dark Half is definitely underrated, but I wouldn’t say it’s something you need to put at the top of your must-see list. It’ll likely have a greater appeal to King fans who are also writers themselves, with its numerous meta-elements.