'As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled their head about him anymore'.
This is a line from Washington Irving's short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and we realize the psychic Johnny Smith may have been forgotten while in a coma. Yet now with his newly discovered psychic powers after waking from a coma, everyone wants a piece of him. David Cronenberg's "The Dead Zone" is a disquieting, extremely effective and tightly structured thriller, among the finest adaptations of Stephen King's novels. It is one of the few remarkable horror pictures with a science-fiction bent that draws out the humanity more than the special effects to work. And boy, does the movie work overtime on your nerves.
Set in the fictional Castle Rock, New Hampshire, Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) is a teacher who has an affinity for Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. He is dating a fellow teacher, Sarah (Brooke Adams), who is completely head over heels in love with him yet their love remains unconsummated. Rather than spend the night with Sarah, he travels home during a thunderstorm and gets into an accident with an 18-wheeler truck. Five year later, Johnny wakes up from a coma and discovers he has psychic powers. First, he sees a young girl in danger of dying in a fire just by touching the hand of a nurse, the girl's mother. Later he picks up clues to a murder by touching the hand of the murdered victim! This guy starts getting tons of mail at his address with possible requests to retain his second sight services, yet his headaches gets worse and he walks with a limp. To top it all off, Johnny's former love Sarah is now married with kids. And to make matters worse, a driven political candidate named Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) is in town and is ready for a future Presidency. When Johnny touches Greg's hand, let's say there could be a potential nuclear annihilation in the future. Johnny now discovers he can see the future.
Most of "The Dead Zone" is chilling in its atmosphere, from its wintry locations (filmed in Canada), to the cool colors of the characters' wardrobes (Sarah wears a blue dress in her first meeting with Johnny post-accident; Anthony Zerbe, playing a millionaire, wears a blue robe after the demise of a hockey team that his son thankfully did not participate in, thanks to Johnny's intervention); to the frightful surroundings of an icy tunnel; to Greg Stillson's senatorial campaigning with a Norman Rockwell logo combining blue and red colors that looks offputting, and so much more. Director David Cronenberg brings this grim tale alive with subtle art direction that feels just right and all the right tension notes are played - the whole movie really gets under your skin. One scene must be discussed here: the location of the Castle Rock Killer in a small house. The home looks inviting enough yet when Johnny enters along with the Sheriff (Tom Skerritt), something again feels off and it is not just the killer's overprotective mother (a crushing cameo by Colleen Dewhurst). The room look infantilized (wallpaper of cowboys and Indians, a paperback for kids called "Apache Kid") yet the normal-looking bathroom where a self-mutilation occurs keeps us off track yet again. The setup, the terse music score Michael Kamen, and the camera compositions of not knowing what lurks around the corner builds the frightful suspense in such intensifying ways that most crime TV shows of late or crime movies couldn't possibly match.
Christopher Walken gives a sympathetic, fully layered performance of a man who cannot fathom why he has these special powers or why he had to suffer and lose out on the life he wanted. When he discovers the truth about Greg Stillson and asks his doctor (deftly played by Herbert Lom) if he would've killed Hitler knowing what he was about to do, it chills us to the bone because we understand and want to nurture Johnny in whatever decision he wants to make. Same with Sarah, wonderfully and poignantly played by Brooke Adams, who so desperately wanted a life with Johnny yet she can't really let him go. Life takes its own toll on people and we carry on through whichever path it leads us. Johnny, fortunately or not, has the power to change that and even he doesn't know where it might lead.
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