The Dead Zone (1983)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Johnny Smith is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him but, after leaving his fiancee's home one night, is involved in a car crash which leaves him in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes, he discovers he has an ability to see into the past, present and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.
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What critics compared The Dead Zone to
Maybe the actual second warning was seeing The Dead Zone, David Cronenberg’s famous 1983 sci-fi thriller, playing on a TV a little earlier.
The movie earns a terrific Dead Zone reference along the way…
Cheekily, at one point 1980s psychological horror The Dead Zone plays on a TV.
Until recently, the violence has always stood apart from humanity, seeping into our pores from outside sources and poisoning the charactersâ lives in films such as Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers, and many more.
Director David Cronenberg, a specialist of dark, brooding action and psychological thrillers, has lurked on the fringes for decades, surfacing for the occasional cult hit, such as "Scanners" (1981), "The Dead Zone" (1983) and "eXistenZ" (1999).
Now in his early 60’s, Mr. Cronenberg, a one-time honors student in English language and literature at the University of Toronto, has retained his obsession with the yearnings and vulnerabilities of the human body and mind in increasingly depraved human societies, in such films as Rabid (1977), The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981), Videodrome and The Dead Zone (both 1983).
Working from a script by Josh Olson adapted from John Wagner and Vince Locke's graphic novel, Cronenberg reprises the naturalistic style he used in 1983's underappreciated "The Dead Zone."
The Top Gun offer came after Cronenberg had scored at the box office with The Dead Zone (1983) and The Fly (1986).
After that, his films increased in popularity with "Scanners" (1981), "Videodrome" (1983), and "The Dead Zone" (1983).
Cronenberg may appear to have edged into the cinematic mainstream of a violence decidedly more random than his previous meditations on gynecology as torture ("Dead Ringers") and existence as torture ("The Dead Zone").
David Cronenberg, famous for "The Fly," "Scanners" and "The Dead Zone," cowrites and directs this visceral drama -- who better to document a regular checkup than a horror auteur?
But The Dead Zone and The Fly are horror classics (a true classic transcends its genre), sentimental stories beneath gross-out surfaces.
Dead Ringers is a phenomenal piece of filmmaking, easily one of Cronenberg's very best works -- and this is a filmmaker who rarely (if ever) makes a BAD movie, so please do feel free to rank Dead Ringers right next to The Fly, Videodrome, and The Dead Zone.
The secret may be that Cronenberg ( director of “ The Dead Zone ” and “The Fly”) approaches his trashy material with the objectivity of a scientist; it is his detached, cold style that makes the material creepy instead of simply sensational.
I haven’t seen them all, but Doctor Sleep may be the most morose Stephen King adaptation since The Dead Zone.
What’s more, with a judicious application of hair gel, he strikes an eerie resemblance to Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone .
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Back in the '80s, when I was much too young and impressionable to know better, I was very taken with narratives featuring tragic-romantic leads: From John Irving's stuff (Garp, Owen Meany) to Stephen King's and David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (with its haunted hero, John Smith) to -- especially -- Cronenberg's singular masterpiece, The Fly (with Jeff Goldblum as doomed dork-bug Seth Brundle), I was digging the goner guys.
Think Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone crossed with Bradley Cooper in Limitless.
Davies instead revisits his speculative BBC series Years And Years with the plot about Barnard’s Roger ap Gwilliam, a future far-right UK prime minister whose psychopathic patriotism evokes President Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone, with Ruby plotting to stop him by turning her pesky shadow on him.
…worthy of sitting alongside classics like “The Shining,” “The Dead Zone,” “Christine,” and “Misery.”
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And so the horror film was dead again, with a few notable exceptions keeping it breathing, once again, such as Sam Raimi's wonderfully clever Evil Dead films, Cronenberg's intelligent The Dead Zone (1983), Videodrome (1983), and The Fly (1986), Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1987), and others.
Horror fans looking for cinematic shocks à la Carrie and The Dead Zone might have trouble with Misery, but those with more subtle tastes should enjoy its sinister, low-key tone.