The Dead Zone was one of the earliest films to be adapted from a Stephen King novel (there have since been more than 100), yet in many ways it does not reflect the typically visceral horror of either King or the film’s director, David Cronenberg. If anything, the tenor of The Dead Zone could be described as quite restrained, even though it features a child in danger of burning to death, a serial killer who stabs his victims with scissors, and an attempted political assassination.

In both King’s 1979 novel and the film, the story focuses more on the characters and how they are affected by a psychic phenomenon, rather than on the phenomenon itself. This was especially true of the novel, in which King created one of his most endearing relationships between small-town schoolteachers Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) and Sarah Bracknell (Brooke Adams). One of the preliminary weaknesses of the film version is that screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) cuts short the extensive opening section of the book that establishes their relationship. Instead, we get only a few brief scenes to establish Johnny and Sarah’s burgeoning romance before tragedy strikes in the form of an 18-wheeler that jack-knifes on the highway down which Johnny is travelling after dropping Sarah off after a date. Johnny’s car smashes into the trailer, and he is thrown into a coma for five years. When he awakes, half a decade of his life has slipped by, during which time Sarah has married another man and had a baby that is now 10 months old.

But, there’s something else: When Johnny awakes from his coma, he discovers that he now has an extrasensory power. He first realizes his ability when he touches a nurse’s hand and is able to see that her young daughter is in danger in a burning house. When he touches the hand of his doctor, Dr. Sam Weizak (Herbert Lom), he is able to see that the doctor’s mother did not die in helping him escape Nazi-occupied Poland as he had previously believed. Johnny’s new ability allows him to see into people’s minds, their pasts, and their futures (in a sense, this is a bit too narratively convenient, since the vague nature of Johnny’s power lets him see whatever is most interesting and necessary for the plot). However, when he sees the future, there is always a blank spot in his vision—a dead zone—that he eventually realizes is a representation of his ability to change what lies ahead.

Soon, Johnny is faced with a great moral dilemma: While shaking the hand of a third-party Senate candidate named Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen), he sees a future in which Stillson eventually rises to the Presidency and sets off a nuclear war. Thus, Johnny is burdened with the knowledge that Stillson will, in a few years, be responsible for ending humanity. So, as he asks Dr. Weizak in a thinly veiled parallel scenario, “If you could go back in time before Hitler’s rise to power and, knowing what you know now, kill him, would you do it?”

It is this moral dilemma that is the climax to which the story aspires, but the narrative takes a winding route to get there. When a local sheriff, George Bannerman (Tom Skerritt), gives up on all conventional methods for capturing a serial killer that preys on young women, Johnny becomes involved with the hunt. There are some touching scenes between Johnny and his elderly father (Sean Sullivan), and there is always the question of how Johnny will deal with Sarah and her new life. As he tells her, it’s been five years for her since they last kissed on her front porch, but to him it has been only a matter of hours. Thus, even if her feelings have changed, his have not.

Unfortunately, while this episodic structure worked in the novel, it does not translate as well to film. It gives the film a meandering quality, where each individual section is intriguing, but they are difficult to add up to a meaningful whole.

The film benefits from its performers, though, especially Christopher Walken’s thoughtful portrayal of an average man thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Walken, who had recently won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his haunting role in The Deer Hunter (1978), has a screen presence that sometimes works against the notion of him as an ordinary, small-town high school teacher, but his performance is eventually disarming in its sincerity. Brooke Adams (Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) has real chemistry with him, even in their truncated scenes, which gives the film an added layer of romantic pathos. And, as the borderline psychotic Stillson (a kind of blustering, faux-populist forerunner to Donald Trump minus the wealth), Martin Sheen comes close to going over the top, but never quite does it.

Although David Cronenberg had already established himself as a serious horror and science fiction auteur with Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), Scanners (1981), and Videodrome (1983), his presence cannot be felt in the film in any appreciable sense. On the surface, at least, The Dead Zone is not a story that is particularly suited to Cronenberg’s fascination with, and adeptness at, portraying body horror, and his attempt to helm a film that is not in line with his typical preoccupations perhaps accounts for The Dead Zone’s somewhat flat nature (although Cronenberg was deeply involved in the production from early on and had a great deal of input into the script). Nevertheless, the humanity projected by Johnny and the other characters is reminiscent of Cronenberg’s best work, particularly The Brood (1979) and his remake of The Fly (1986).

Copyright © 2020 James Kendrick

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

All images copyright © Paramount Home Entertainment