Scary Movie Month 2014, Day 5

Stephen King's A Good Marriage

Well, poop. I'm a big fan of Big Steve, and this is the first time he's adapted his work (for film, not tv) in 25 years (the last time was Pet Sematary). It was not worth the wait.

A Good Marriage was a novella from Full Dark, No Stars. It was less than 100 pages and there was just plain not enough there to sustain a full-length feature. Also, so much of the story is dependent on Joan Allen's character's inner monologue that it's impossible to translate the stuff that really works to the screen.

Allen plays a woman who accidentally stumbles (quite literally) onto evidence that her husband (Anthony LaPaglia) is a notorious serial killer. It's inspired by the real life case of Dennis Rader, better known as the B.T.K. killer, who was a devoted family man who also had a habit of torturing and murdering women and children. There was a movie made about Rader, not a very good one but better than this, that starred Kane Hodder in the lead and he was very effective as a family man with a horrifying secret. As scary as Hodder is, there was a gentleness to his performance that is surprisingly absent from LaPaglia's here. LaPaglia goes straight for menacing, and it takes away from the story, it only serves to make you wonder why she didn't recognize that he was a psychopath in the first place. Also, there are two or three too many "it was a dream" shock moments that don't shock at all, thanks to Peter Askin's flat, uninspired direction.

Lastly, Stephen Lang plays a retired detective on LaPaglia's trail and he's an actor who fascinates me because he has exactly two modes, very good (Manhunter, Tombstone, Crime Story) and very, very bad (Avatar, this) with absolutely no in between. He's fairly terrible here, all quirks and mannerisms, making his character into a terminally-ill Columbo caricature that feels completely inauthentic.

There's a good story in here, but not every story is meant to be a movie. I hate to say it, especially with King's direct involvement, but this is about as uninvolving and inessential as thrillers get. For King completists only.