The Dark Half Description
Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) is a happily
married family man with a successfully two-faced career as a
writer. On the one hand, he publishes respected but poorly-selling
scholarly works under his own name. It is under the name George
Stark, however, that he sells millions of books with his signature
strain of extremely violent action novels. When Thad makes the
decision to write only under his own name, he stages a PR-friendly
burial for his pen name which receives prominent media coverage.
After this event, it’s not long before townspeople somehow
connected to Thad start turning up dead, with all clues pointing
to the unassuming author. Is there a second party trying to frame
Thad? Could the murders be somehow connected to the fragments of a
undeveloped twin removed from Thad’s brain when he was a boy?
When the sheriff (Michael Rooker) finds Thad’s fingerprints at
the crime scenes, the unsuspecting author’s life spins
increasingly out of control. Director George Romero adapts
frequent collaborator Stephen King’s 1989 best-seller into a
tight mainstream thriller with a fine dual performance from
Hutton.
In director George A. Romero's THE DARK HALF,
based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King, author Thad
Beaumont sees his very normal family life turn upside down when
his nom de plume takes on an identity of its own and commits a
series of violent murders.
Shot on location in Pennsylvania.
THE DARK HALF was completed in 1991, but the collapse of
distributor Orion Pictures caused the film to languish on the
shelf for two years.
"...An exceptionally entertaining
film....Outdistances every other King adaptation [besides THE
SHINING]..."
"...It certainly ranks as one of the top
King adaptations..."
