inri222

Found a nice article on the film so I decided to start this thread.

Enjoy :

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/2378...-the-dead-zone

Looking back at David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone

Feature Ryan Lambie Dec 11, 2012

Christopher Walken stars in Cronenberg’s 1983 film, The Dead Zone. Ryan looks back at a great Stephen King adaptation...

On the face of it, David Cronenberg's decision to take on an adaptation of Stephen King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone must have seemed a strange one back in the 1980s. Having just directed the disturbing and downright brilliant Videodrome the year before, Cronenberg then signed up to direct a relatively mainstream movie, an adaptation of another writer's work (his first) with a paranormal subject matter - an unusual topic for a cerebral director with little time for the supernatural.

But as Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining proved, the pairing of an analytical filmmaker with a pop horror premise can produce movie magic, as though the collision of these two opposing forces somehow creates a unique spark of its own. This certainly proved to be the case with The Dead Zone, a supernatural drama that is less grandiose than The Shining, and less sensationally violent than Brian De Palma’s Carrie, but stands alongside both as one of the very best Stephen King horror adaptations yet seen.

Light relief?

After Videodrome, it seems that Cronenberg was looking for a tonal break from his previous film's maelstrom of kinky sex, mind-control and death. "Videodrome was a very heavy experience," the director said in the book, Cronenberg On Cronenberg. "If you're used to comedy, The Dead Zone is a very heavy picture. But if you're used to Videodrome, Dead Zone is not. At that point I needed to do something based on somebody else's work, as a relief."

It says a great deal about Cronenberg's style as a filmmaker that this supposed 'relief' entailed a shoot in a frozen Ontario, Canada, where temperatures plummeted past freezing, leaving actors shivering and fractious. Then again, the inch-thick snow and tangible breath-on-the-air coldness added to the movie's oppressive atmosphere; The Dead Zone is about a young man suddenly thrust into the winter of his life, where every premonition makes him a little more frail, a little closer to the abyss.

The combination of the snowy Canadian landscape (standing in for King's usual Maine setting) and Christopher Walken's haunted, wan face make for an absorbing experience in themselves; with the addition of Cronenberg's taut direction, Michael Kamen’s beautifully lonely score and Jeffrey Boam's episodic yet perfectly paced screenplay, the results are hypnotic.

Walken plays Johnny Smith, a mild-mannered teacher in the New England town of Castle Rock. In a blissfully happy relationship with a work colleague, Sarah (Brooke Adams), Johnny's stable life is torn apart when he's involved in a collision with an out-of-control tanker, sending him into a coma which lasts for five years.

Waking up weakened and utterly out of step with the world - his girlfriend Sarah "Cleaves unto another man," as his maniacally religious mother puts it - Johnny discovers that he's somehow acquired a psychic power: he can see both the past and future of those he touches. When clasping the hand of a nurse, he foresees that her daughter's about to be caught in a housefire. Contact with his doctor, Sam Weizak (the great Herbert Lom) reveals his past suffering in World War II, and also the revelation that his mother, whom Sam had assumed had perished, is still alive.

Johnny’s new ability comes at a price: each time he uses it, his headaches appear to worsen and his strength dissipates. Although initially reluctant to use his ‘gift’ - which, like the psychic powers in Scanners, is also a curse - Johnny’s growing loneliness prompts him to help a local sheriff solve a series of murders. Although Johnny succeeds in identifying the Castle Rock Killer, he’s injured in the process, causing him to retreat further into seclusion. Later, Johnny’s chance encounter with a presidential hopeful named Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) leaves him with an apocalyptic glimpse of the future: if Stillson becomes president, he’ll trigger a nuclear holocaust. With his health rapidly fading, Johnny has to decide whether he has the resolve to kill the life of one man in order to save millions...

Origins

The Dead Zone was optioned shortly after its publication in 1979, and several screenwriters and directors were involved in its production before Cronenberg took over the project in 1982. Stanley Donen (Hollywood’s ‘King of Musicals’, with his CV including Singin’ In The Rain), John Badham and Michael Cimino were once attached to direct, while Stephen King had attempted to write a draft of the screenplay himself.

“Stephen King’s own script was terrible,” Cronenberg later said. “It was not only bad as a script, it was the kind of script that his fans would have torn me apart for doing [...] It was basically a really ugly, unpleasant slasher script. The Castle Rock killer in the middle of the movie becomes the lead, and it was, ‘Let’s show lots of his victims.’”

Jeffrey Boam concurred, later stating that King had “Missed the point of his own book.”

In the process of adaptation, Cronenberg and Boam greatly streamlined King’s long and complex novel. The narrative switches between Johnny and Greg Stillson were removed, with the story told entirely from the protagonist’s point of view. Although violence remains in Cronenberg’s movie (not least its eye-watering ‘scissors suicide’ scene, long cut by the UK's film board), it’s less graphic and excessive than the book; Greg Stillson no longer kicks a dog to death, and Johnny’s deterioration is suggested rather than patent. This is Cronenberg at the height of his creative restraint.

The story was simplified further in the final edit. Cronenberg had originally filmed a pre-credits scene in which Johnny suffers a head injury while ice-skating as a young boy - the implied genesis of his psychic powers. Cronenberg ultimately trimmed this out, leaving only the vague suggestion that Johnny already had some sort of latent power before his accident - as hinted at in the scene where he suffers a sharp head pain while riding on a rollercoaster.

Although wildly different from his previous movies, at least on the surface, The Dead Zone represented a further stage in Cronenberg’s development as a filmmaker. Surrounding himself with a remarkable cast - including the great Anthony Zerbe appearing in a brief role as a hard-nosed millionaire who foolishly refuses to take Johnny’s advice - Cronenberg showed off his talent as an actors’ director.

While his earlier movies were full of excellent individual performances (Samanthar Eggar in The Brood, Michael Ironside in Scanners, James Woods in Videodrome), The Dead Zone was perhaps the first Cronenberg movie to feature a uniformly sterling cast. And shorn of the usual body-horror excess, those performances really sparkle: Martin Sheen is great as the alternately glad-handing and ranting right-wing maniac Greg Stillson, and gets one of the film’s best lines (“The missiles are flying. Hallelujah!”). Herbert Lom is equally good as Johnny’s doctor and confidante, as is Brooke Adams as Johnny’s unobtainable love.

It’s Christopher Walken, of course, who dominates the movie. With his walking stick, batwing coat and lonely eyes, he turns in an extraordinary performance, full of pathos, vulnerability and longing. Before filming began on The Dead Zone, various names were bandied around for the lead role. Curiously, Stephen King wanted Bill Murray. Cronenberg was concerned that Walken might be too old to play the part, and his original choice was his frequent collaborator Nicholas Campbell, who instead played the deputy sheriff Frank Dodd. The director later admitted that Walken was not only right for the role, but also the film’s enduring image.

“It’s Chris Walken’s face,” Cronenberg later said. “That’s the subject of the movie; that’s what the movie was about. All the things that are in his face.”

Aftermath

Although critics agreed, giving The Dead Zone some of the most positive reviews of Cronenberg’s career at that point, the movie didn’t have the popular impact it deserved. It still made money - approximately $20million on a budget of $10million - but the movie wasn’t a hit of the same magnitude of, say, Carrie, and only made about as much money as Lewis Teague’s tepid adaptation of King’s Cujo, or John Carpenter’s rendering of Christine, also released in 1983.

After finishing the movie, Cronenberg’s career briefly entered a sort of dead zone of its own. He worked on an original script for Universal which was never filmed, and he then became embroiled in the production of Total Recall. He turned in a dozen or so drafts of his Total Recall script (which added several ideas Schwarzenegger would encounter in 1990, including subterranean mutants on Mars), but repeated creative differences with producers Dino De Laurentiis and Ron Sushett left the project withering on the vine. Having spent around a year working on Total Recall, the production ground to a halt. Eventually, Cronenberg would go on to direct The Fly, released in 1986 - a studio movie which finally found the audience it deserved.

The Dead Zone, meanwhile, remains one of Cronenberg’s fascinating creative experiments. A cold, brooding and desperately melancholy movie, it’s also beautifully shot - the stark image of a silhouetted figure standing in a tunnel, the light on the dank stone walls forming what looks like a spider’s web, was so striking that it became the basis of the film’s poster.

And fittingly, for a film about predictions of the future, The Dead Zone hinted at the new strain of Cronenberg movie which would later emerge - movies such as Dead Ringers, Spider and A History Of Violence. Movies that are dramatic, ominous, and full of coiled restraint.

dvdjunkie32

I would love to see this film get the Criterion treatment.

bunkaroo

Love this film - might be my favorite Walken performance.

Charlie Goose

Da ice.....is gonna BREAK!

inri222

http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/deadzone.asp

RE(FOCUSED)VIEWS
Examining misunderstood and underrated films that deserve a second look

by Brian Eggert

The Dead Zone (1983)

Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Martin Sheen, and Tom Skerritt
Rated: R
Runtime: 103 min.

In the early 1980s, David Cronenberg had just finished work on Videodrome and was already fully aware of his own growing status as an auteur,
a writer-director filmmaker with a personal style and set of reoccurring themes through which he told his stories. His succession of bodily horror
titles like They Came from Within, Rabid, The Brood, and Scanners solidified this notion with critics and horror aficionados alike. And yet, after
the exhausting, evacuating creative experience that had been writing, filming, and releasing Videodrome earlier in 1983 to an unenthusiastic
commercial response and split assessment from critics, Cronenberg wanted to challenge himself not by tapping into his own creative pipeline
once more, but by taking a project that was not of his own devising and place his personal stamp on it. When he was approached by
producer Debra Hill, who was partnered with legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis, to make a film version of Stephen King’s 1979 novel,
The Dead Zone, he immediately signed on.

Even before its release, Cronenberg’s film of King’s novel was received with disappointment and skepticism. Videodrome’s immeasurable
aesthetic vision had set his followers’ expectations high, and with the announcement of his new project, it seemed as though Cronenberg
was leaving behind his directorial signatures concerning the body for a pointedly Hollywood project—if only because King adaptations had
been assigned such a reputation. Two months before The Dead Zone opened in October, Lewis Teague’s version of Cujo had earned a
moderate profit, and in December of that year John Carpenter’s underrated adaptation of Christine would hit theaters, though neither
were well received. However, as history would show, films based on King's books neither guaranteed success nor a quality product,
although their trend began promisingly enough. Brian De Palma’s breakthrough on Carrie (1976) would become a landmark of the
horror genre, as would Stanley Kubrick’s liberally adapted but nonetheless brilliant epic The Shining (1979)—both superb
experiments in style and tone. A 1978 television miniseries based on Salem’s Lot also earned plenty of attention.

All were successful, commercial projects and Cronenberg’s involvement in yet another King adaptation, for many, signaled his
crossover into mainstream filmmaking. Only after 1983 would King adaptations become suspect; titles like Firestarter (1984),
Cat’s Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), and Pet Cemetery (1989) would each become disappointing films. The Dead Zone was
received with lukewarm reviews, and even among Cronenberg’s most devoted fans, the film is considered a sidestep in his
progression from his deeply personal origins for The Brood to his grand conceptual realization in Videodrome—
the combination of which would lead to his masterpiece, The Fly (1986). Indeed, The Dead Zone seems constructed
as an opposite to Cronenberg’s usual brand of story. His characters are by and large urban dwellers with elaborate
names like Bianca O'Blivion and Daryll Revok and Murray Cypher, deeply involved in their own sexuality and decidedly
apolitical and non-religious. In contrast, this film follows Johnny Smith, a simple teacher from rural Maine who restrains
his sexuality, is surrounded by God-fearing characters and, in time, takes action based on his politically-influenced beliefs.

Still, as Cronenberg worked closely with screenwriter Jeffrey Boam, very Cronenbergian themes emerged even though the
director himself did none of the writing. During the film’s long development, several scripts were considered by the producers.
Stephen King himself completed a draft, whereas Polish director Andrej Zulawski also turned in a script, but Cronenberg
noticed how they each distanced the audience from the story by taking an objective approach. They viewed a story in
which “normal guy” Johnny Smith (to be played by Christopher Walken) gets in a car accident, spends five years in a
coma, and wakes up with precognitive, psychometric powers from no perspective at all. In the story, Johnny touches
someone’s hand and jerks into reality-bending visions that, for the character, blur the line between this moment and
the next. He uses his abilities to stop (among other incidents) the “Castle Rock Killer” and prevent political candidate
Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen, over-the-top and fantastic) from inciting a nuclear war as president. But each proposed
script told the story with emphasis on the killer or Stillson, allowing for unnecessary slasher or torture scenes that
Cronenberg saw no place for in his adaptation.

But rather than writing the script himself, in a sense he directed Boam on what scenes to omit or include,
how to change this or that character to tell the story that Cronenberg wanted to tell. For example, in the book,
before his accident, Johnny is ostensibly engaged to his longtime sweetheart, Sarah (Brooke Adams);
but after waking from his coma, he finds that she’s married and has a young child. Johnny recoils from
society after his publicized “second sight” garners unwanted attention when his visions save a child from
burning up in a fire. As he’s unable to teach in any public capacity, he serves as tutor for a wealthy young man
named Chuck. Cronenberg changes this detail in the film to make the story more affecting: To emphasize
Johnny’s emotional response, Cronenberg had Boam change the blond-haired, Corvette-driving Chuck into
the reserved, emotionally withdrawn preteen named Chris (Simon Craig), who for Johnny represented the s
on he never had with Sarah. In this respect, the audience would come to better relate to Johnny as a
broken man—someone who once was certain of his own life and future, until something disastrous befell him,
and he became an outsider in his own story. That sense of isolation is what Cronenberg and Boam draw out
in the script, and what endures as the film’s most engaging quality.

Adjusting seemingly minor details—such as switching Chuck to Chris, or decreasing the presence of and
perspective away from the “Castle Rock Killer” and Greg Stillson—in effect makes the film more and more
Cronenbergian, but in very subtle ways. Consider Johnny’s condition in the book, which emerges after an
ice-skating accident and from the oft-used King device of a brain tumor (as explained away in the epilogue).
In the bool, Johnny’s precognitive abilities show their first signs when he’s a young boy, and as his tumor grows,
so do his abilities. The book features the same car accident, but his skill for precognition has already revealed
itself in slight ways. Long after Johnny awakes from his coma, he learns that he will eventually die of his brain tumor
and, with nothing to lose, this is when he determines to become an assassin before Stillson can incite a nuclear holocaust.
At a rally, Johnny waits in a balcony for Stillson to appear. He fires but misses, and during the commotion Stillson
grabs a baby and holds it up as a human shield. Johnny is shot down by bodyguards, but the photographs taken of
Stillson using a baby for protection effectively ruin his political career. Cronenberg and Boam keep the assassination idea,
but omit everything else.

Although the idea of a brain tumor might seem to appeal to Cronenberg, whose frequent use of disease as a
physical signifier of a psychological malady has informed so many of his films, in his adaptation of The Dead Zone
he chooses to broaden the connection between Johnny’s gift (or curse, as he initially sees it) and his physical condition.
In the film, rather than a gradual development over time, his precognitive visions only occur after waking from his
five-year coma following the car accident. The trauma of this singular incident, which has so dramatically shaped
his life and left him alone, is the sole instigating factor in Johnny’s ability. From this incident, Johnny is plagued by visions,
and in each vision he sees a blank spot, or “dead zone” that offers a possibility for an alternate future, leaving Johnny
to take action and stop his vision from occurring. Nevertheless, with each vision, Johnny’s physical state deteriorates.
The effects of his accident have ruined his emotional life and now slowly tear away at his body, weakening him—
a point articulated when, before his accident, Johnny gives his class their last assignment, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
a story wherein a teacher is haunted by a headless demon. In fact, his condition behaves like a disease that was
contracted from his trauma and now eats away at him until he is nothing more... A thoroughly Cronenbergian plot point.

The understated gradations and appearances behind Walken’s performance emphasize the idea that Johnny suffers
from a trauma-induced disease. When Johnny first appears before the accident, Walken’s hair is flat and rounded;
large glasses widen the shape of his face, which always seems to hold a smile. After the accident,
Walken appears without glasses, his face pale and bony, his eyes darkened, his hair thrown up and back
as if zapped by an electrical jolt. Walken breathes complexity into Johnny Smith by smiling at strange,
ironic moments; the character is acutely aware that his life has become some kind of experiment-gone-wrong
in the hands of what Cronenberg has called “God the scientist” (paraphrased), or a joke of Nature.
Moreover, this is one of Walken’s finest roles, brimming with intensity and nuance, and ushering one of the only
instances in any Cronenberg film where the audience might feel their heartstrings tugged upon. Walken,
walking about with a cane like some Frankenstein monster, slams aside a glass dish with his cane in a fit of rage
or gestures with his hand to stay away in a moment of intense heartbreak, and the audience feels it through and through.
It’s a performance that enhances every scene in an emotionally charged film.

Though Stephen King purists will argue that Cronenberg changes too many plot details for the film to be considered
an accurate reproduction of the novel, even King himself has noted that changes made by Cronenberg capture the
spirit of the novel with great attention on character and emotion. On several occasions, King has named it among
his favorite films based on one of his own books. Even if Cronenberg captured the novel’s spirit, that spirit didn’t
help capture audiences or convince the majority of critics at the time. The film’s position within Cronenberg’s career
felt pointedly out of place then, with its conspicuous lack of extreme metaphors—the fleshy makeup effects and
grotesque physical revolutions that had been so common in his work thus far. But isn’t a physical trauma that
gives way to a psychic one also an extreme metaphor, and also a prevalent theme in Cronenberg’s oeuvre?

In 1983 and the years immediately following, the film stood out in Cronenberg’s career as a peculiarity, given its
shortage of gory images, especially considering its placement after Videodrome and before The Fly, two of the
director’s most elaborately graphic pictures. But today, The Dead Zone compares best to Cronenberg’s more
recent films, those that may not rely on body-transforming metaphors yet involve deeply moving stories and
characters, with his usual attention on the relationship between the physical and psychological always present
nonetheless. In a way, The Dead Zone is precognitive itself, in that it falls in line next to later Cronenberg titles like
Spider, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and A Dangerous Method as one of his most perceptive and complex
dramas. And now, after the release of his more recent string of purely dramatic, arguably mainstream films, the
director’s longtime devotees have accepted that Cronenberg’s auteurism extends into realms far beyond mere bodily
horror in spite of their supposed commercialization. With this in mind, it’s time to revisit The Dead Zone and celebrate it for the sophisticated tale it is.

Strevlac

It's a really good movie. Understated with no flashy pyrotechnics yet immaculately made. This one is about people, not hey look at me aren't I a great filmmaker?

I need to watch it again soon. It's been way too long.

musick

have major love for this movie and still am eagerly awaiting the blu release

dekker

One of my favorite Cronenberg films and one of Christopher Walken's best roles. I also like the TV series with Anthony Michael Hall.

Lastdaysofrain

I actually think this is a rare king adaption that is better than the book. Cronenberg jettisons some of the clunkier things in the book and improves on the structure big time.

JayDerek

definitely agree with this statement.

inri222

http://www.mania.com/fall-83-dead-zo...le_138599.html

Fall of '83: The Dead Zone

Few people mention The Dead Zone when they talk about favorite Stephen King adaptations. It’s not especially showy and it arrived amid a glut of similar big-budget releases based on the author’s work (one of three in 1983 alone). The Shining and Carrie made a bigger splash before it, while Frank Darabont’s more modern efforts have brought King’s best elements out more clearly. And yet The Dead Zone gathered a unique collection of elements that can’t readily be matched. It starts with director David Cronenberg whose chilly eye found heartbreaking tragedy in the story of a normal man gifted with psychic powers. He’s matched by his leading man, Christopher Walken, who parlays his signature creepiness into an achingly sympathetic performance that ranks among his very best.

Walken plays John Smith, a quiet high school teacher whose drive home one evening is interrupted by a runaway truck. Knocked into a coma for five years, he wakes up to find the love of his life (Brooke Adams) remarried and his formerly idyllic life wiped away. In exchange, he’s developed a unique quirk: by touching other people, he can see their future and – in the story’s most delicious twist – change it if he tries.
It’s not exactly a blessing and it brings him more pain than grief, a dilemma that Cronenberg treats with his usual cryptic detachment. In that sense, he aptly captures the atmosphere of King’s book, making small tweaks here and there but finding the core of the story with comparative ease. King was interested in the psychological implications of this ability. What kind of a toll would it exact on its user? Does Smith have the right to turn away from what he sees, knowing that he could doom someone in the process? And what happens when something comes along that’s too big to ignore, courtesy of a charismatic politician (Martin Sheen) with some serious crazy in his eyes?
Sheen’s completely over-the-top in the best way: his role here is a delicious 180 from his later turn as the President in The West Wing. Against him, Walken’s unassuming everyman seems hopelessly outclassed, but for the one piece of information to which he alone is privy. It’s a great fulcrum for heavier thinking, coupled with more traditional thriller elements that Cronenberg delivers with the technical mastery we’d expect from him. The Dead Zone talks seriously about a God who doesn’t seem to care, about touching a universe that dwarfs everything we thought we knew, and about how our seemingly small sacrifices can serve some larger plan. Another filmmaker might have missed those little touches, but Cronenberg is too careful and too smart to let them pass.
In the end, however, he still couldn’t do it without Walken, who avoids the ironic winking of later roles to deliver a character as serious as a heart attack. There’s something off-putting about Smith: something a shade unsettling in his movements and gaze. But rather than repulse us, it actually makes his isolation and loneliness all the more sympathetic. The man has been devastated, seemingly at the whims of fate, and even the revelation of an ultimate pattern provides little comfort. The Dead Zone leaves a lot of questions deliberately unanswered, letting us wonder if we’d be capable of doing what Smith does, were we in his shoes.
It makes for gripping supernatural drama, all the more notable because it wasn’t quite what any of the principals had done before or since. Walken rarely gets a chance to play Ordinary Guy like he does here, while Cronenberg’s penchant for the weird and obtuse is abandoned without losing the exquisite sensibilities that make him such a great filmmaker. Even King moved in a slightly different direction with this one, staying away from straight-up horror for one of the first times in its career.
It kind of sneaks up on you. This is not a noisy film, and won’t attract the kind of spotlights that an evil Plymouth or rabid St. Bernard might. But it delves deeper than they do for its ideas, and travels much further as a result. The Dead Zone ultimately ranks as one of the best King adaptations to date, during a time when his work became the subject of increasingly hackneyed adaptations. Thank Cronenberg for treating the material with the respect it deserves, and thank The Dead Zone for holding King’s adaptations to the very highest standards.

islandclaws

I haven't watched this in years, but I did watch Cat's Eye last night and there's a scene where James Woods is watching this on TV and he asks, "Who writes this crap?"

musick

still waiting

Supermallet

The Dead Zone is easily one of the best King adaptations.

kd5

Watched it just recently for the 2nd time since I purchased it a few years ago, 3rd time all told. Good movie. Glad to have it in my collection.

Dr. DVD

Really like this movie. Didn't know King wrote a script that wasn't faithful to his own novel.

JumpCutz

Hands down my favorite King adaptation. Cronenberg was in a monster groove during this period. He can still direct circles around most of his peers. Easily one of Walken's best performances.

inri222

http://www.fangoria.com/new/fango-fl...ead-zone-1983/

FANGO Flashback: “THE DEAD ZONE” (1983)

When Cronenberg comes up in discussion among horror fans, THE DEAD ZONE doesn’t get quite as much attention as Cronenberg’s more esoteric and bizarre offerings. In fact, THE DEAD ZONE is almost a perpetually overlooked title among the director’s impressive oeuvre, despite being as scary as any film the Canadian Master of Horror has ever crafted. Even more to his credit, Cronenberg crafted something truly unsettling and eerie while effectively visualizing the voice of Stephen King, who, at the time, was a bona fide horror powerhouse with a legion of loyal fans.

For those unfamiliar, THE DEAD ZONE follows teacher Johnny Smith, who falls into a coma following a tragic automobile accident. When Smith awakens years later, not only is his life in disarray but he has acquired the supernatural power of foresight via touch, preventing the death of a nurse’s child while locating his doctor’s long-lost mother. Soon, Smith becomes a notable local figure, and soon uses his gift to better the world despite the psychological and physical toll the power takes on him.

Perhaps the reason THE DEAD ZONE never gets its due credit is because how the film interprets the horror and supernatural elements at hand. There’s no denying that THE DEAD ZONE is a horror film, especially considering the film’s dark second act in which our protagonist uses his new power to hunt a serial killer. But the fact that the supernatural elements that are so integral to the story and yet never feel as if they’re exploited for stylistic effect is a bold choice on Cronenberg’s part as a filmmaker, and would understandably provide fright fans with a reason to forget how decidedly in the genre that THE DEAD ZONE resides.

Furthermore, THE DEAD ZONE brings its scariest scenes at the midway point of the film, and never quite compromises King’s story even if it’s subverting his intended narrative structure. In that sense, THE DEAD ZONE is just as much of a horror as it is a drama, a thriller and a tragedy of the highest order, with the supernatural aspect applied as fuel to elevate the stakes of the other genres. And rather than taking King’s story as a starting point to something much more horror-oriented, as Kubrick did with THE SHINING, Cronenberg actually does the opposite and stays relatively faithful to King’s intended story arc and instead applies his unique cinematic touch to the proceedings.

To that point, Cronenberg finds a way to bleed his vision organically into King’s voice via his ambitious and confident direction, unafraid to explore the scope of the tale while always reeling it back into intimacy. Even when Cronenberg places Johnny Smith in a burning bedroom, the scene feels fantastical in nature but always ties back to the human element in the corresponding scene in the hospital. And for a filmmaker who roots his efforts so much in the critical, satirical and nightmarish, it’s almost as if King’s material helps Cronenberg anchor himself in the grounded, human world in which THE DEAD ZONE exists.

But Cronenberg isn’t the only one responsible for how effective THE DEAD ZONE is, even if his personal touch is apparent in almost every facet of production. Mark Irwin’s cinematography is effortlessly entrancing while simultaneously patient, which helps seamlessly blend the scariest sequences in with the simplistic drama. The same can be said of Jeffrey Boam’s unnerving screenplay and Michael Kamen’s rather brilliant score, punctuating the emotional and eerie in equally effective fashion. And, of course, there’s the amazing performances on display, all of whom are elevated by Christopher Walken in a unfortunately rare and ultimately powerful performance that ranks as one of the best in both King and Cronenberg’s respective histories.

Crocker Jarmen

I wish more of this interview was on-line, but here's a short snippet of Cronenberg interviewing King at TIFF a few years ago.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yQ8B2TD24uc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

musick

yep