The Dark Half

Secret Window, Secret Garden is a story about a writer living in solitude, who eventually goes schizophrenic and starts killing people. His alter ego is a man who claims that the writer stole one of his stories, and is out to get him. Before that, Stephen King took that story a different direction in his book The Dark Half .

This story is one of the many that loosely orbit around the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, so some of the characters from other King flicks show up in this film. In this case, it's the character of Alan Pangborn that appears in multiple films (both Needful Things and The Dark Half). In The Dark Half though, the real story is Thad Beaumont / George Stark (both played surprisingly well by Tim Hutton). Thad was conceived with a twin, but only he made it out (a very common occurrence). Well, that's not quite true, seems part of his twin was absorbed into his head, and required surgical removal as Thad approached adolescence. Then through some twist only King can come up with, his brother comes back as the physical representation of Thad's fictitious pseudonym (pardon the redundancy), George Stark. George is not a happy guy. His stories make King's stories look like happy fairy tales (so of course they sell millions of books), while Thad's stories get critical praise and end up in the remainder bins at the local Eagles Supermarket (which oddly enough, is where I got my copy of this book). Then some nosy fan discovers that Thad and George are one and the same, and decides to try to cash in on his knowledge. But Thad has become much more pleasant in his old age (he has a wife (Amy Madigan), and two kids (twins in fact)), so rather than pay off the nosy fan, he decides to go public with the story himself, and lay George to rest. Bad move. George crawls out of the grave (literally), and starts killing people, and since he's a product of Thad's mind, he has Thad's fingerprints, and even shares Thad's thoughts. At first, Sheriff Pangborn wants to arrest Thad, but since all of Thad's alibis check out, he has no choice but to help Thad when George moves in. After some sneaking around by Thad, a lot of neck slitting, cop killing, and kidnapping by George, we get to the big showdown where Thad wins and gets his summer house destroyed, George looses and gets carted back to the nether world, and the actor playing Alan Pangborn (Michael Rooker) doesn't get cast to play him in Needful Things.

This film follows the usual format that directors take with King films, dark and forboding throughout. Victims all look rather stupid, and you feel like yelling out LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU STUPID, but of course you don't because this isn't The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and you're not supposed to. I said Hutton did a good job playing the dual role because he plays the part, not as twins separated at birth, but as two completely different people, who just happen to share a few physical parameters (oh yeah, and a brain too). Story faithfulness is pretty good here too, probably because this book isn't too terribly long (much the same can be said of Carrie as well). The film is low budget, which is why it didn't seem too get much exposure (apart from a fold out poster in Rolling Stone), but I think you'll find it an enjoyable film all the same.