Region: 1
Video: Enhanced Widescreen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
Audio: Dolby Digital w/ sub-woofer channel
  Dolby Digital w/ 4 channels of sound from a 2-channel stereo mix.
  Dolby Digital Mono
Language: English, French
Subtitles: English
Weight factor: 1 item(s)

Plot Synopsis

Christopher Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a five-year coma. He discovers that he has acquired the ability to foretell a person's future simply by touching his or her hand. After seeing several examples, Smith's doctor (Herbert Lom) becomes convinced that Smith can not only predict the future, but also has the power to change it. This ability is given its severest test when Smith shakes the hand of ruthless political candidate Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) -- and suddenly has a flash-forward to a nuclear holocaust. The Dead Zone is not only one of the best-ever Stephen King adaptations, but also one of the most consistently successful (and least gory) efforts of director David Cronenberg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Editorial Reviews:

David Cronenberg's adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Dead Zone succeeds in fusing the distinct vision of two very different approaches to horror. Where King's books succeed at revealing the horrific and mysterious in a seemingly ordinary world (The Green Mile, Christine, It), Cronenberg has always been intrigued by the fragility of the human body. The movie version of The Dead Zone triumphantly coalesces these two themes into a highly emotional and simultaneously chilling tale. In Christopher Walken, the filmmakers found an ideal actor to dramatize these two themes. Walken's Johnny Smith (a most ordinary name for this most ordinary man) is a decent, quiet English teacher who wants nothing more than to be with his fiancée, Sarah (Brooke Adams). When his powers emerge after a horrific car accident, Johnny still wishes to be ordinary. However, each time he touches someone and sees the future his body reacts violently. As more and more people want to utilize his strange powers, Johnny's body grows weaker and weaker. While Cronenberg has used makeup to effectively show bodily degeneration in other films (The Brood, They Came From Within, The Fly), here he allows Walken to show the physical exhaustion in how he carries himself and in his interaction with the other characters. By the time Johnny takes heroic action, the audience feels both the triumph of so average a man making such a noble decision, and the physical deterioration that makes that decision a little easier. Fine performances by Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, and Martin Sheen help to keep this supernatural tale grounded in an authentic reality. The Dead Zone is very much greater than the sum of its already impressive parts. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide