Released in 1983, ‘The Dead Zone‘ belongs to one of the two better periods of the filmography (otherwise quite unequal) of film director David Cronenberg. The film has many of the characteristics – better or worse – of the cinema of the ’80s and of the screenings after Stephen King‘s books. Nearly four decades after its making, today’s viewers can find enough reasons to criticize, for example, the lack of credibility of some dialogues and situations, the cinematography or the obsolete and exaggerated dramatic style of the actors. However, the feeling I had at the end of the viewing was of a clever horror film and an interesting cinematic experience. ‘The Dead Zone‘ looks like a ’80s movie that survived well the passage of time and is – in my opinion – one of the good screenings inspired by Stephen Kings books or even written by him, a collection of films that comprises many hundreds of titles, with some remarkable achievements but also with many resounding failures.
It takes a few minutes to realize that the actor who plays the young spectacled and in love professor Johnny Smith, is Christopher Walken, of course in a much younger version of himself, but already having in 1983 a number of great films on his record. Smith is a typical hero of Stephen King‘s books, a young man with a banal name living a quiet life as a teacher in a sleepy town, in love and close to marrying a colleague, also a teacher at the local school. An accident happens that changes the whole life of the heroes and triggers the events in the film. In ‘The Dead Zone‘ after a five-year coma, Johnny Smith wakes up not only to see that the world around him has changed but also to see that the accident has given him supernatural powers that can be a blessing or a curse. – in his case the power to read the past of those he comes in contact with but also to predict their future. The impact force of Stephen King‘s intrigues lies in the fact that he does not try to explain too much of the physical or psychological phenomena, and when he explains he does it more at the level of popularisation. Categorising King’s books and the movies that are inspired by them as science fiction is in my opinion in most cases a mistake. They belong rather to the fantasy or horror genre, descending from E.T.A. Hoffmann and E.A. Poe more than from Jules Verne.
For the scheme to work, scientific credibility must be replaced by artistic credibility. In films, this requires the consistency of the plot with the fantastic idea, a visual concept and a selection of actors who immerse the audience in the story without feeling the need to use reality as a reference. Christopher Walken dominates this film, living on screen the transformations of the hero from the trauma of the accident, through the shock of the time lag, the understanding of the powers that events endowed him with and the decision to use his forces to intervene in the lives of others. David Cronenberg had the chance of one of the most consistent screenplays in films inspired by Stephen King‘s books. Other films would later explore similar themes (the supernatural powers of heroes gained from traumatic events) including the temporal paradoxes opened up by influencing the future. Cronenberg is not interested in these complications. His hero considers the ‘gift’ of foresight more like a curse until he understands that he can use it for good. That ‘dead zone’ mentioned in the title of the film not only provides the ambiguity that makes the difference between rational and fantastic explanation, but also provides an area of freedom in which the aspiration for good of the main hero (and of the viewers who sympathise with him) can act. ‘The Dead Zone‘ is an example of the fact that the horror genre can coexist very well with positive messages when the dosage of emotions is accurate and when the artistic execution is accurate.