Stephen King’s The Dark Half revolves around the idea of supernatural events, where the protagonist Thad Beaumont has to stop his evil alter ego, George Stark. The film adaptation captures this idea perfectly, while it transitions from a happy to depressing mood to make the story more compelling than a consistent depressing mood. This transition though is wasted, as the ending fails to convey the spirit at the end of the novel, and leaves us with a meaningless and ambiguous ending.
Using appropriate mise en scene elements, the adaptation effectively constructes the conventions of a horror film. The novel used vivid and strong descriptive writing to convey the antagonist as a powerful and murderous character. In one part of the book, King described a scene of a man who was murdered by his penis getting chopped off and stuffed down his throat, and how blood was all over the place. Since the antagonist is not physically scary, as being a sinister twin of the protagonist, the film used elements such as jump scares and dark lighting to stir fear into the audience, and was executed effectively. Prior to a murder scene, Romero used dark lighting to build tension with the audience, and to give the hint that the character was in danger. Stark’s hand suddenly jumps out of a door and rams the victim’s head into a wall, and the shot was taken in a way to surprise the audience. The cinematography of the film also conveyed the parts of the story well, such as close up shots used when characters were in tense situations, like sudden realization and fear. When Thad anxiously was talking to the police on the phone, his face filled the shot to show his stress and fear. The Dark Half is also considered one of Stephen King’s most gruesome books by many fans and critics, as it has numerous murders described in the most disturbing and vivid ways possible. George Romero’s use of special effects captured the gore perfectly, such as when Stark’s flesh was being ripped from his face. He does however use poor transitory scenes to go from one scene to these murders, and at times they feel abrupt and out of place. The adaption conveys the horror genre with its mise en scene elements, although these abrupt murders sometimes make the story unclear.
Despite conveying the horror theme of the novel accurately, the film veers off from the pacing of the Novel to make the story more pleasing and interesting to film viewers. In the story Thad Beaumont makes a pen name known as George Stark, to write more thrilling books in hopes of being a best seller. His plan succeeds, but George soon turns into an alter ego which manifests itself into the real world to live there. The novel paces consistently in a depressing tone, as the reader never feels that Thad is ever happy. He repeatedly experiences despairing events such as possession and distrust. The film however, gives the audience a new perspective, as it uses transition of how Thad was living a happy life, to how George’s reincarnation ruined it. The transition actually makes the story more interesting, as consistently pacing in a depressing tone for a film would be monotonous and boring. The film however wastes the potential of this good use of transition with its ending. Close to the ending of the book, a supporting character, remarks on how terrible it must be to be Thad; how a horrible creature crawled out from Thad to murderer into this world, and if he could even live with the memories and thoughts of the event. The film however, wastes the opportunity to use its transition to its full potential and neglects any ending to begin with. The film’s ending is simply a shot of all the sparrows flying away from Thad’s house, and the credits start to role. This ending is simply too ambiguous and meaningless to conclude the film, and wastes the film’s good use of transition from a happy to depressing mood.
The film wasted its effective use of transition with its ambiguous and meaningless ending, conveying no mood or feeling to sink into the audience. I liked its good use of filming techniques and mise en scene elements, which effectively conveyed a sense of horror and despair. Despite this, the film’s potential was wasted on a pathetic ending which didn’t capture the concluding spirit of the text, and failed to conclude the events of the film.
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