The Dead Zone

Arguably the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel.

The Dead Zone does what only a good supernatural thriller can do: It makes us forget it is supernatural.

David Cronenberg turns The Dead Zone into an accomplished psychological thriller.

It has some of that episodic ‘compressed miniseries’ feel which a lot of King pictures get stuck with (the book was later redone as a TV serial with Anthony Michael Hall) but still manages a lot of powerful material.

The Dead Zone, from the book by Stephen King, a horror novelist whose prolific output is the scariest thing about him, is academic filmmaking all the way, a crafty Establishment tour de force. [21 Oct 1983]

It never really chills you, but then it never insults you, either, and it's more affecting than you expect any film based on a Stephen King novel to be. [22 Oct 1983]

By no means a bad film, just a disappointingly bland and superficial one.

Despite the over the top third act, The Dead Zone is still one of the best adaptation to a Stephen King novel I've seen. The acting is great, the cinematography is beautiful and the atmosphere is dark and gritty. If you're a fan of the novel, you will not be disappointed.

A book and a film or TV adaptation has to focus on the main story with the main character on what he or she does when completing the whole plot but David Cronenberg deserves respect from adapted the story and his vision of The Dead Zone fits well with a serious drama, a mood of science-fiction and horror is the key word of Stephen King's imagination.

Part police procedural, part political thriller, part supernatural horror - "The Dead Zone" is a phenomenal mixed bag wrapped in fantastic intrigue and sure-handed direction from David Cronenberg.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The twisted imaginations of Stephen King and David Cronenberg collide in this strangely episodic series of bite-sized ESP adventures. After he’s involved in a midnight collision with a jackknifed milk truck (just roll with me here), Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) spends five years in a coma and awakens with a foggy sense of clairvoyance. Johnny’s personal life has gone down the toilet, particularly as his lovely fiancée has moved on, married and had a child in the ensuing years, but his newfound psychic capabilities make him something of a local celebrity and people begin taking notice. Among them is Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen), a grassroots politician with an aggressive, populist appeal. Walken is enjoyably weird, even by his usual standards, teasing Johnny’s increasing unease into a deranged, confused state of functional madness. Despite the occasional visions of little girls trapped in burning buildings or youth hockey teams plunging through the ice, though, most of the story is too subdued. Check, we saved the schoolboy by talking him into skipping skating practice. Let’s just go about the rest of our day for a while, awaiting the next random crisis. Apart from the occasional melodramatic headache, the psychic stuff is all similarly businesslike and matter-of-fact. Excitement that arrives in short doses, then disappears into mundanity. That changes when Sheen’s political nutjob enters the fray in the last half-hour. Played with an outrageous abundance of manic energy and cartoonish rage, the character feels like Daffy Duck in The Exorcist. Who is this guy, and what movie was he actually cast in? His influence leads Johnny to some very strange places, too, with a riotously superficial, ham-fisted premonition to set our hero sailing off into the land of no return. The ensuing climax is absolutely *hilarious*, great out of context viewing, but a mismatch for the mood and identity that had already been established. Zany, yes. Antithetical, also yes. There’s hints of good stuff here, but not enough to make for a good finished product. Maybe a good highlight reel. I expected more consistent energy from sirs King and Cronenberg.