Product: The Dead Zone [VHS] (1983)
Rating: 5.0
One of my faves
Thsi is w=one of my favorite movies and Christopher Walken struck me as both eerie and sad in this film long before I knew who he even was. Whats handled nicely here is the responsibility of precognitive dreams. It could've simply been about him seeing things and doing something but this makes them more complex than that as it works to deal with the ramifications of all of this ability. In someways this is about the web that permeates from our lives to that of others and how we're only a few people away from destruction, how we're linked to darkness in ways we don't even suspect. I think that this and the Shining take the best look into someone having an odd ability an dthe personal price that wroughts. Whats nice about Stephen King's concept is that it pretty much came off here. Perhaps what works best in his films is the lack of special effects. To try and produce them with tends to disrupt the flow of the movie. Here Walken's acting and Brooke Adams make a tragic couple who's lives were interrupted for a number of years by his coma but ultimately their love is the sacrifice to save the world from Martin Sheen. Perhaps the message, intended or not is to look at our lives as part of a bigger landscape than just what we want.