The Dead Zone (1983) movie review

The Dead Zone is a movie based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, and was released in 1983, starring Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, Brooke Adams as his girlfriend Sarah, Tom Skerritt as Sheriff George Bannerman, and Martin Sheen as Greg Stillson. The movie follows Johnny Smith a school teacher in a small town in Maine (near King's fictional town of Castle Rock). He and his girlfriend Sarah, seem to have a happy relationship, both are teachers and life seems good. After a date to the fair Johnny leaves Sarah's house to go home, but on the way he gets in a car accident and is seriously injured and is in a coma for five years. When he wakes up, his girlfriend has moved on and is married with a child, and he begins his struggle through rehabilitation to walk again. While recovering in the hospital a nurse touches him, and he gets a vision of her house burning down with her child in it, and sure enough the house is on fire and the fire department saves her daughter just in time, at this point it is discovered that Johnny has telepathic powers and by touching a person can see things. Word of Johnny's powers spread and he becomes hounded by people trying to get him to tell them things about their lives. So time jumps ahead and Johnny is living in a farmhouse with his father, and Sarah and Johnny spend some time together, and there is still a love that is alive there, though it can't happen. Also during this time Sheriff Bannerman asks Johnny to help him solve some unsolved serial murders in Castle Rock. Johnny doesn't initially want to help, but later ends up helping and solving the murders. Time again skips ahead and we find Johnny living alone in an apartment, running a private tutoring service out of his home. While doing this he meets a rich man who asks him to tutor his son, again he has a premonition of the kid dying in an accident where the ice breaks while he and his hockey team are playing hockey. During this time he also first encounters the character Greg Stillson, who is a politician that has been mentioned in the background through out the film. Stillson becomes an important character in the final act of the film. Stillson, is a politician that people seem to love because he speaks his mind, and he seems to be a man of the people. Johnny finds out after accidentally shaking hands with Stillson that Stillson is going to cause a global catastrophe and develops a plan to end it as the move builds to an intense climax. I want to talk about Stillson a bit here, because King writing about Greg Stillson is in a way a bit prophetic as the character of Stillson is eerily similar to Donald Trump and his rise to power, in how people love him for speaking his mind, for being a non traditional politician, and a man of the people (which is what the conservatives see Trump as). Then when we find out what is in Stillson's future, it becomes a bit scary seeing how similar him a Trump are, seeing that beneath the surface he is a very unhinged and dangerous man. While I was reading this book, this made me very uncomfortable seeing how it seemed that King almost predicted the coming of Trump. Okay, that tangent aside, lets get back to discussing the movie. The movie is not a truly faithful adaptation of the book, and there are many different changes that were made. However I would honestly say that this is a great adaptation nonetheless, because even though a few things change, it still captures the the feeling and intent of King's novel. This is honestly a pretty great movie, and the actors were well cast and played their roles really well, especially Martin Sheen as Stillson. Walken's trademark over acting really works well in this film (which was wonderfully parodied on Saturday Night Live when Walken was a guest on the show soon after the movie came out). I feel that the sets and the mood of the novel were beautifully brought to life in this film. Cronenberg did a great job directing this film. One critique that I would have though would be that the jumps in time were kind of abrupt, and could have benefited with some kind sort of cues to let the viewer know that time is elapsing, or even how much time is elapsing, this also kind of gives it a rushed feeling. The movie just seems to rush from thematic scene to thematic scene, as the story is basically told in chapters with different themes for each chapter. But despite those flaws I would still say that this is an excellent film, and very well done. I also wanted to mention an observation that I made as I was watching the movie, that I never really picked up on before, Walken in the first scene of the movie is teaching literature to his class, and says that next week, they will be reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow where a school teacher is chased by a headless demon, which is great because many years later in his career he would in fact play that headless demon in the movie Sleepy Hollow. Would I recommend this movie? Yes, I would absolutely recommend this classic retelling of Stephen King's classic novel. The movie has everything needed for a great movie, the right amount of horror, drama, and suspense, as well as a great cast playing their characters very well, and Christopher Walken, I mean what else could you really want in a movie.