For the longest time I always got this movie mixed up with Brainstorm, believing them to be one and the same. It's an easy mistake to make since they are both cerebral thrillers starring Christopher Walken that came out within a month of each other.
Walken stars as Johnny Smith ('cause he's just a normal guy. But not everybody will get that. That's just for the scholars a hundred years from now) an ordinary school teacher with a loving girlfriend who is in a car accident one night and wakes up from a coma five years later with psychic abilities that he unwisely doesn't keep to himself and becomes a public spectacle. With his new powers he helps the police fight crime and prevents future disasters from happening. Though he's not very happy about it, especially as his girlfriend effed-off to be with someone else.
If any of you have seen Medium with Patricia Arquette then this will hardly seem new or exciting to you. However, Walken is always captivating and I'd pay good money just to watch him read the dictionary, or even Twilight. Strange to think that Stephen King wanted Bill Murray for the role. My big problem with the movie is that there just isn't much plot, which is fine as it doesn't have to be a traditionally-driven narrative. I don't mind watching Walken discover new abilities and help people in trouble, it just builds to a bit of an unsatisfying climax. It's especially frustrating as David Cronenberg is known for his disturbing body-shock movies and The Dead Zone just seems a bit tepid in comparison to his other work. The car crash at the beginning is also rather unspectacular and hardly the kind of thing that would result in a five-year slumber. Cronenberg has not made a career out of long movies, but at 103 minutes it's just too thin. I know he filibusters and waffles a lot, but Stephen King's novel ran well over 100,000 words so there was clearly enough literary material to work from.
I do enjoy the cinematography by Mark Irwin, who went on to shoot RoboCop 2 and Scream. There's a lot of cold, wintry atmosphere to The Dead Zone, and it's all done in-camera, giving it a real, earthy feel. If this were made in current year it would all be done against a green screen with excessive filtering and it would look terrible. How I miss old-school filmmaking.
What is rather odd about this movie, especially considering the subject matter, is that Walken, in more than one scene, recommends reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a movie he would later star in as The Horseman. Martin Sheen's character also makes a prediction that he will become president, which he did, to great acclaim, in the TV show The West Wing.
But there's something else lurking in the background, perhaps some intentional psychological trickery by David Cronenberg. In three different scenes/locations there is a picture of a sailboat. In the movie Brainstorm Walken starred alongside Natalie Wood, an actress who mysteriously drowned in the Pacific off the coast of Catalina in 1981 in circumstances that are still not fully understood to this day, though her husband Robert Wagner took a lot of heat for this apparent accident.
Who was their guest on that yacht the night she died? Christopher Walken.
Am I reading too much into this?
A decent thriller, and a subdued effort from Cronenberg considering the source material.
Walken stars as Johnny Smith ('cause he's just a normal guy. But not everybody will get that. That's just for the scholars a hundred years from now) an ordinary school teacher with a loving girlfriend who is in a car accident one night and wakes up from a coma five years later with psychic abilities that he unwisely doesn't keep to himself and becomes a public spectacle. With his new powers he helps the police fight crime and prevents future disasters from happening. Though he's not very happy about it, especially as his girlfriend effed-off to be with someone else.
If any of you have seen Medium with Patricia Arquette then this will hardly seem new or exciting to you. However, Walken is always captivating and I'd pay good money just to watch him read the dictionary, or even Twilight. Strange to think that Stephen King wanted Bill Murray for the role. My big problem with the movie is that there just isn't much plot, which is fine as it doesn't have to be a traditionally-driven narrative. I don't mind watching Walken discover new abilities and help people in trouble, it just builds to a bit of an unsatisfying climax. It's especially frustrating as David Cronenberg is known for his disturbing body-shock movies and The Dead Zone just seems a bit tepid in comparison to his other work. The car crash at the beginning is also rather unspectacular and hardly the kind of thing that would result in a five-year slumber. Cronenberg has not made a career out of long movies, but at 103 minutes it's just too thin. I know he filibusters and waffles a lot, but Stephen King's novel ran well over 100,000 words so there was clearly enough literary material to work from.
I do enjoy the cinematography by Mark Irwin, who went on to shoot RoboCop 2 and Scream. There's a lot of cold, wintry atmosphere to The Dead Zone, and it's all done in-camera, giving it a real, earthy feel. If this were made in current year it would all be done against a green screen with excessive filtering and it would look terrible. How I miss old-school filmmaking.
What is rather odd about this movie, especially considering the subject matter, is that Walken, in more than one scene, recommends reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a movie he would later star in as The Horseman. Martin Sheen's character also makes a prediction that he will become president, which he did, to great acclaim, in the TV show The West Wing.
But there's something else lurking in the background, perhaps some intentional psychological trickery by David Cronenberg. In three different scenes/locations there is a picture of a sailboat. In the movie Brainstorm Walken starred alongside Natalie Wood, an actress who mysteriously drowned in the Pacific off the coast of Catalina in 1981 in circumstances that are still not fully understood to this day, though her husband Robert Wagner took a lot of heat for this apparent accident.
Who was their guest on that yacht the night she died? Christopher Walken.
Am I reading too much into this?
A decent thriller, and a subdued effort from Cronenberg considering the source material.