Product: The Dead Zone [VHS] (1983)
Rating: 4.0
The Dead Zone :The Ice Is Going To Break
Many movies have been made from Stephen King's books. Most of them have been bad. The exceptions are "Christine," "Misery," and the best, "The Dead Zone." David Cronenberg, a master director of horror, quirky and sometimes over the top, directs "The Dead Zone" with a sure hand. Christopher Walken, playing mostly villains the last few years, wonderfully plays an awkward, compassionate school teacher, crippled and put in a coma by an auto wreck, then wakes, having lost his love but gaining insight into the future. This kind of thing has, frankly, been overdone in the movies, but here the story's line is so clear, the acting so good, that we forget that it is a supernatural thriller and we become involved with these all too human characters. There are some baroque touches,such as the Frank Dodd suicide, somewhat gratuitus compared to the rest of the film's images. Cronenberg's best work, I feel, is when he is not trying to be too far out, which means most of his films after this one. "The Fly" was another masterpiece and again Cronenberg was reined in a little. Cronenberg directs and gives this "quiet" horror film a savage beauty, so when the climaxes and surpizes come, they are all the more powerful. This is a great film of any genre and I think Cronenberg's best work. "The Dead Zone," will last longer than his more recent, "controversial" films such as "Crash." He has this obsession with the body and the machine and still makes movies exploring his own demons. Some of these explorations are interesting but ultimately boring for such a wonderfully talented director, one of the best in the horror or any genre. But stay with "The Dead Zone," a movie worth buying and merits repeated watchings.