![]() Actually, the real “dead zone” is Johnny’s own life, which he can neither see accurately nor change.Ĭronenberg’s ruthlessly linear adaptation stresses this miserable situation by, for starters, excising everything from the novel that smacked even faintly of sensationalistic occultism. The titular “dead zone” refers to the part of his psychic visions that Johnny can’t quite see, and he later surmises that it’s the part that he can thereby change. The four-and-a-half years he spends shut off to the world are excruciating, but his eventual awakening doesn’t particularly present much of an optimistic alternative. The protagonist’s (and King’s) stripes as a tragic hero are earned because, in spite of the fact that he can see everything from every other time period in clear detail, he can’t attend to his own personal narrative. The novel’s central whatzit, Johnny’s psychometric gift/curse, is subtly paralleled with his misspent life, and opened up a brief period in King’s work where horror of the extraordinary mingled with the more mundane horrors in a genuinely provocative manner. The Dead Zone’s biggest misstep is King giving his protagonist the cipherous moniker of Johnny Smith, which is considerably lower on the rung of obnoxious creative conceits-or, at least, an easier one to ignore-than a hotel ghost party serving phantom cocktails to a recalcitrant alcoholic. Salem’s Lot showcases admirable geographic organization, and The Shining has miraculously black moments of terror, but neither demonstrate a maturity of theme that would reward multiple readings. It came off the heels of The Stand and Night Shift, and it was the first fully successful piece of legitimate literature in his career. It’s the feeling of a headache on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, and it stands shoulder to shoulder with all of the other masterpieces in the first round of Stephen King film adaptations-a line stretching from Brian De Palma’s Carrie to John Carpenter’s Christine-back when the author let real directors tackle his work and not campfire storytellers like Frank Darabont.Īs much as the film is a transitional work for Cronenberg, so is the 1979 book for King. ![]() ![]() David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone is one of the Canadian auteur’s most emotionally warm films, even at the same time as its devastating sense of topographical isolation remains at absolute zero. ![]()
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