Bounding Into Halloween Brings Doppelganger Drama On Night 16 With ‘Hatching’ And ‘The Dark Half’
It is said that there are two wolves inside all of us. One appreciates high-quality art, and another revels in mindless mediocrity for the sake of entertainment. You never truly know a person until you discover the shameful joys that they hide from the rest of the world, as there are those who conceal a completely different person from those closest to them. Tonight’s tales of duality shine a light into humanity’s dark side, and they show just how far suppression will get a person.
The Hatching (2022)
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This bizarre family affair is from the Land of 1,000 Lakes that’s right between Sweden and Russia, and tells the story of a twelve-year-old named Tinja (Siiri Solalinna). The poor kid had the rotten luck of being born into a family with a superficial nutjob for a mother (Sophia Heikkilä), a spinless jellyfish for a father (Jani Volanen), and an insufferable little brother (Oiva Ollila).
The domineering matriarch is obsessed with presenting the “perfect” family through her blogs and livestreams. To call her a ‘caging runt’ who ranks high among her peers is a fair assessment, and the first five minutes will prove this to any skeptics out there (unless they hate birds).
One day, Tinja finds an egg while wandering the local woods. She brings it home to incubate, all while keeping the egg a secret from the rest of the family of fair-haired weirdos, and it hatches into a hideous bird-like creature that looks like it could be a Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.
The thing continues to grow until it begins taking on the feature of its surrogate mother, but then it starts acting out Tinja’s repressed emotions from a lifetime of being the vessel for some narcissist to live out their shattered dreams, and let’s just say that Skeksis-Tinja has a bone to peck with some people.
Hatching is a strange film that goes so over-the-top (and without a single feather of shame) that it would be impossible to take it serious, but the Body Horror acts like a grotesque anchor that keeps it from becoming a satirical Comedy.
This movie will test the gag reflex of many seasoned veterans, and anyone who’s hypersensitive to animal deaths will be laying their own eggs before Tinja even meets her new friend. It’s available on TUBI and the trailer is below:
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The Dark Half (1993)
From dearly departed director, George “Zombie King” Romero, is an adaptation of the 1989 novel by that one guy who can’t write a decent ending without blowing up a entire town full of people, and this is at least the tenth time that he’s made a fiction author his main character.
Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) is a writer of stuffy academic novels that nobody buys. To make up for this, he moonlights under the pseudonym George Stark to write books that his regular demographic would dismiss as “pulp crap,” and those sell like hot cakes, but then a blackmailer arrives threatening to expose his secret.
Thad decides to expose himself instead, but legally. He publicly “retires” George Stark in a mock funeral with his wife (Amy Madigan) in their hometown that’s right outside of Castle Rock. The witty wordsmith believes that he’s had the last laugh, but then everyone involved in the “retirement” starts dying, and all the evidence is pointing towards him. That’s when his mother (horror vet Beth Grant) drops a bombshell.
Thad underwent surgery as a kid to remove a tumor from his brain. It turns out that it was “NOT A TOOMAH,” but actually parts of twin that was absorbed in utero, and the doctors properly dispose of it. For reasons that aren’t even within shouting distance of coherent, the George Stark persona manifests into physical being to go on a murder spree, and it feeds off Thad’s dark creative impulses. If the concept sounds just a little absurd then I must have undersold it.
Stephen King used to write under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in the late 70s/early 80s, and he published five good novels (with The Regulators just being OK), but it only took a few years before some very observant bookstore clerk would notice the similarities in writing style. With his cover officially blown, King made it into a big publicity stunt (just like Thad!), and this story is the vanity piece that followed.
The Dark Half does not come highly recommended, but someone out there might like the movie, and they can find it on TUBI. Here’s the trailer:
