The Dead Zone
released 1983
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“The Dead Zone” is an American, scif, paranormal, thriller produced by Jeffrey Chernov, Dino De Laurentis and Debra Hill. It was directed by David Cronenberg and the screenplay was written by Jeffrey Baom which was based on the book of the same name written by Stephen King. It stars the great Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Nicholas Campbell, Sean Sullivan, Jackie Burroughs, Géza Kovács, Roberta Weiss, Simon Craig, Peter Dvorsky, Julie-Ann Heathwood, Barry Flatman, Raffi Tchalikian, Ken Pogue, Gordon Jocelyn, Bill Copeland, Jack Messinger, Chapelle Jaffe and many more.

The Dead Zone IMDb webpage

“The Dead Zone” is the story of schoolteacher Johnny Smith, played by Christopher Walken, who ends up in a coma after a car accident. He wakes from his coma after 5 years and must learn to walk again and rebuild his life. He walks with a cane but is a new man. He has psychic abilities and can read people’s lives like reading a book. He even sees the future of people’s lives. As time passes Johnny grows weaker as his psychic abilities grow stronger. At one point he helps the local sheriff with a murder investigation and later finds out a disturbing truth about a wealthy member of the community when tutoring his son. The ending is good and I won’t give any spoilers.

I remember seeing this movie on TV and loved the story. Stephen King is known for having great ideas in his stories. Check out “The Mist” for example. I loved that story too. The main character in this story receives what some might say is a wonderful gift. But, the irony is that in knowing the past, present and future of people, in being able to peel back the veil of the unknown and look into their real selves his gift ends up being a curse because he sees so much bad. I imagine after a while someone like him would start to genuinely dislike people. The twist here is that a gift that seems wonderful when looking at it from the outside might be a curse from the point of view of the recipient. It spite of everything Johnny does his best to be responsible and do the right thing but this is a heavy burden placed on his shoulders. The cursed gift is a great story element like someone inheriting a lot of money only to attract the worst, most predatory people into their life.

So, many of Stephen King’s stories deal with the issue of the not-so-nice side of people’s nature that comes out in a crisis. In many of his stories we see the different facets of the bad side of human nature like the religious fanatic, the killer and the power hungry person of means with sinister intentions. I really get the impression that the author does not see people as mostly good, to put it mildly. I love the way he deals with social issues in his stories though. As strange as this might sound, that dynamic really is the glue that holds the author’s characters together. W. Shakespeare (The Bard) rubs opposites together well.

I also have to say that many a great talent worked on this film. I loved Christopher Walken in this film. He really injects the right amount of spookiness, fear and desperation to the story. He really is a great actor with a long list of great films. His brand of acting is so unique. There’s no one else who can do what he does the way he does it. So, hats off.

This film also had me wonder what I would do if I possessed his gift? Stopping bad people from causing harm is a good direction to head in. Although I do believe that that would be very difficult in some cases, even with his gift. Selfish pursuits would be boring very quickly and anything that caused harm would be out of the question, of course. But here is the twist, in some cases meaning well and acting on good intentions could cause harm. So, in order to be effective you would need the help of others to ground you and see what you don’t in terms of solutions to problems. And that would be like building an entire company to help you use and mange your gift with good focus and a clear mind. This gift is a lot more powerful and requires much more work to handle than you might think at first glance. I think you would need to track down someone like the Man of Steel himself, Superman, or Wonder Woman and get a few pointers from them. jk.

Otherwise, this is a great story that has aged well so far. They’ve even made a TV series in 2002 which might be worth the watch.

Check out “The Dead Zone” it’s a good movie.

John Ink2Quill

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