‘I fled him down the nights and down the days…’
Stephen King’s novella collection Full Dark, No Stars contains some of King’s nastiest stories. A Good Marriage is not only the darkest in the collection, but it also attracted controversy due to its similarities with the real-life serial killer Dennis Rader. This plodding adaptation from director Peter Askin is a faithful retelling but it contains none of the source material’s obsidian power…
On the surface, Darcy (Joan Allen) and Bob Allen (Anthony LaPaglia) have the perfect marriage. A nice home. Three successful grown-up children. An accounting business with a sideline in the collection of rare coins. But Bob is harbouring a dark secret.
One surprising thing about this movie is the pedigree of those involved and its subsequent total failure. Even the most ardent King fans have probably never heard of this adaptation despite the fact that King himself wrote the screenplay and the cast contains several experienced and celebrated actors. Not just Allen and LaPaglia but also Stephen Lang as a retired detective and Cara Buono as a flirtatious neighbour. Unfortunately, while LaPaglia has been a talented performer, he gets it all wrong here. To really sell this part, the viewer needs to be convinced on both sides of the coin (pun intended) – we must believe that Bob is not only a terrible murderer but that he could also pass as a loving and committed family man. In LaPaglia’s hands, the character just comes across as creepy the whole time. Allen fares better and does a good job in carrying the movie in the many scenes in which she is the only person on screen, but Askin’s adaptation never threatens to emulate the brutal power of the source material.
I don’t think A Good Marriage is as bad as many critics suggested upon release, I was never bored and there are some genuinely inventive and creepy dream sequences and flights of fancy, but it’s also no surprise that this is one of the lesser known King adaptations. For die-hard fans only.