The Dead Zone | Telescope Film
The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

Critic Rating

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  • United States,
  • Canada
  • 1983
  • · 103m

Director David Cronenberg
Cast Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst
Genre Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller

Johnny is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him, but one night, he gets into a car crash that puts him in a coma. 5 years later, he awakens with the ability to see into the past, present, and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.

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What are critics saying?

88

TV Guide Magazine

Arguably the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel.

88

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The Dead Zone does what only a good supernatural thriller can do: It makes us forget it is supernatural.

88

TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)

Arguably the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel.

80

The New York Times by Janet Maslin

A well-acted drama more eerie than terrifying, more rooted in the occult than in sheer horror.

80

Empire by Kim Newman

It has some of that episodic ‘compressed miniseries’ feel which a lot of King pictures get stuck with (the book was later redone as a TV serial with Anthony Michael Hall) but still manages a lot of powerful material.

80

Variety

David Cronenberg turns The Dead Zone into an accomplished psychological thriller.

80

Variety by Staff (Not Credited)

David Cronenberg turns The Dead Zone into an accomplished psychological thriller.

63

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott

The Dead Zone, from the book by Stephen King, a horror novelist whose prolific output is the scariest thing about him, is academic filmmaking all the way, a crafty Establishment tour de force. [21 Oct 1983]

63

Boston Globe by Jay Carr

It never really chills you, but then it never insults you, either, and it's more affecting than you expect any film based on a Stephen King novel to be. [22 Oct 1983]

50

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

By no means a bad film, just a disappointingly bland and superficial one.