Christopher Walken gives David Cronenberg’s psychic thriller a sadness that makes its dangers matter. The storytelling is sometimes disjointed, but the performances and restrained handling of the supernatural make this an easy film to recommend.
The Dead Zone is a fine, unusually sad psychic thriller, held together by Christopher Walken when its separate stories do not quite connect. David Cronenberg directs Stephen King’s material with a welcome lack of eagerness to impress us with the supernatural. Johnny Smith is a teacher who can see the future and potentially change it, yet cannot put his own life right. That last difficulty matters most, and the film is at its strongest when it stays with the man who has to live with this knowledge.
Walken gives Johnny’s isolation an awkwardness that makes him credible. There is nothing comfortable about watching someone who knows more than he wants to, and Walken avoids making that discomfort merely strange or forbidding. We were moved by Johnny’s inability to repair his own life while possessing the power to change the future. Walken’s restraint lets the hurt register without turning Johnny into someone who exists only to be pitied.
Brooke Adams, as Johnny’s former love Sarah Bracknell, is essential to that effect. She gives the life he cannot recover enough substance for its loss to matter, and her underplaying suits Walken’s. Their relationship makes the psychic premise harder to enjoy as a simple fantasy of being the person with all the answers. Cronenberg is willing to spend time on Johnny’s disappointment, and those passages are among the film’s most involving.
Mark Irwin’s cinematography makes Johnny seem cut off from other people, while still letting us read Walken’s unhappiness. Carol Spier’s production design is restrained enough to keep our attention on the performances; the surroundings do not have to announce that something strange is happening. Michael Kamen’s music supports the sadness without treating every moment as a warning that we should be frightened. The film benefits from being allowed to stay quiet.
The difficulty is Jeffrey Boam’s screenplay. Its episodic construction means that our interest has to be renewed as the film moves between story strands, and some of the joins remain visible. Ronald Sanders’s editing keeps the individual stretches clear, but the rhythm of the whole is less secure; at 103 minutes, it can still feel as though it has stopped and started too often. The interruptions cost the suspense some of its force. We wanted more continuity in Johnny’s experience, because Walken has made that experience worth following.
The usual attraction of a psychic thriller is the advantage of knowing what nobody else knows. Cronenberg makes that prospect distinctly unappealing, and the film is better for it. He takes the fear seriously without treating Johnny’s unhappiness as a pause between more important events. Choose it for Walken, and be prepared to forgive the awkward joins.
