The Dead Zone (1983) Review

The Dead Zone (1983) Review

By the early 80’s, Director David Cronenberg was already well-known as a director of body horror films: horror that dealt with terrifying transformations and bodily violations, like The Brood, Scanners, and Videodrome. But he switched things up when he took on the adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, which is a bit more supernatural in nature. 

Johnny Smith, played by Christopher Walken, is a teacher with a good job and a girlfriend, but he loses both when he gets in a car crash and plunges into a coma for five years. When he awakens, he has the power to glimpse the future when he touches someone. The way it works isn’t entirely clear. It only seems to show how people are going to die; he doesn’t find out the winning lottery numbers or anything like that. He tries to help people with his new-found power, and becomes something of a celebrity, but finds his power is slowly killing him. Eventually he meets a corrupt politician running for senator, played by Martin Sheen, and has to decide what to do when he finds out his evil plan. 

This is definitely a character-focused movie. There aren’t a lot of “horror” scenes, save for a couple well-crafted ones, it’s mostly about getting to know these people and their relationships. Johnny is just an everyday man, like many of King’s best characters, and Walken is pretty good in the role. There’s also Tom Skerritt as the local sheriff, who asks for Johnny’s help in solving a murder case. Though his role isn’t a major one, he’s still one of the highlights. Martin Sheen doesn’t appear until later in the story, though his character is talked about in the beginning, and he leaves a strong impression. 

Acting is subjective, so for some, the acting here might seem excellent, but for others it might seem terrible. For me, I found a lot of the dialogue and line delivery sounded stilted and often cheesy, mostly from Johnny’s parents, but a lot of it from Johnny himself. It could be the movie is just a bit dated in these respects, but whatever the case, it took me out of several scenes. 

I was a little hazy on Johnny’s powers. He can see the future, but also the past sometimes, but it only seems to be bad things, and how far he can see into the future isn’t specified, and he doesn’t have full control of his powers. On the one hand, the uncertainty of his powers made for a bit more tension, but on the other hand, there was sometimes more confusion and dissatisfaction because of it. His decision to make his powers public surprised me; typically, you’d expect someone to keep a thing like this quiet, but Johnny’s totally open about it with his doctor and family. He even gets fan mail: another interesting aspect to his character (mainly in the way he reacts to it). 

The pace is quite slow, especially for its runtime, but there are some extended scenes of suspense, and it covers a significant amount of time, story-wise. I found the initial setup intriguing, as well as the way Johnny must recover from his coma, but after he uses his powers to assist the sheriff, there’s a shift, and the movie starts to drag. There’s this sense right from the beginning that the movie is building to something big at the end, and eventually it does reach an exciting conclusion that’s both surprising and satisfying. It could’ve used one or two more visceral scenes in the second act to keep the tension ratcheted up. Unfortunately it sort of plateaus for a while. 

The Dead Zone is critically-acclaimed, and often ranked as one of the all-time best movie adaptations in the Stephen King library. While I definitely admire the directing and most of the writing and acting, I can’t help but feel it’s a bit overrated. I definitely don’t think it’s a bad film, just not at the very top of the best ever. I’d say watch it with moderate-to-low expectations, and you’ll enjoy it more. 

While tedious at points, ultimately The Dead Zone is one of the better Stephen King films, but not one of my favourites. The concept is simple but effective, the characters are interesting, and it has more than a few noteworthy scenes of terror.