THE DEAD ZONE

According to Rotten Tomatoes this is the 7th best Stephen King adaptation out of 68 (!), ahead of ‘The Shining’.

It’s a relatively simple episodic story which I had assumed was a straightforward adaptation of the novel, but the Wikipedia entry makes it clear that the final screenplay was the result of a prolonged and convoluted process. 

David Cronenberg and Christopher Walken seem like perfect and obvious choices as director and lead actor respectively so I was amused to learn that the director might have been Stanley Donen (director of ‘Singin’ in The Rain’) and it might have starred Bill Murray (King’s first choice).

Christopher Walker is Johnny, to whom weird things happen after a car crash leaves him in a coma for five years.

The car crash occurs as he is driving home after he has turned down the opportunity to sleep with his fiancée, Sarah, for the first time, so perhaps the story is a kind of inverted morality tale?

Anyway when he wakes up he learns that Sarah has moved on big time, she is now a married mother.

Later on they jump into bed one afternoon, which struck me as the least plausible thing in the film, which is saying something.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Whilst still in hospital Johnny discovers he has psychic powers which get activated when he comes into physical contact with someone. 

More specifically he can see something in that person’s past or future, or in some cases the past or future of someone connected to the person he touches.  Perhaps it’s just a case that he can see whatever the plot requires.

Crucially the future that Johnny sees can be changed, otherwise the film really would be a dead zone.

When news of his powers spread he is recruited to help identify a serial killer.  This episode includes a very effective sequence set in a snowy park when he realises the killer is the deputy sheriff.

All the time Johnny’s physical health is deteriorating so we correctly sense that he is a doomed character.

But that is not before an exciting climax, involving not for the first time in US cinema politics and assassination.

Sarah and her husband are political activists working for a charismatic candidate, played by Martin Sheen.  Upon shaking hands with him Johnny foresees that  will one day be President and moreover he will recklessly set off a nuclear conflagration.

Johnny does what any self respecting American would and gets himself a rifle so as to kill at a hustings. 

It’s tense stuff and how it all plays out is exciting and rather unexpected, all very satisfying as a resolution.