Stephen King Month: The Dead Zone

4 Stars - Entertaining

So the next book that Stephen King wrote following The Shining was The Stand, however the miniseries of that is six hours long so I'll be doing that further down the line once I've had a chance to watch it all. So in the meantime it's onto King's fifth book, The Dead Zone.

The Dead Zone tells the story of Johnny Smith, who has a horrible car accident and goes into a coma for five years. When he wakes up he discovers he has the ability to see into the future of people he touches hands with. He uses his abilities for a number of situations including helping the police in Castle Rock, Stephen King's most visited fictional town's first appearance, solve a series of murders and tries to stop an evil man from becoming state senator and eventually president.

The film is a lot of fun with Christopher Walken at his most Christopher Walkeniest, and Martin Sheen chewing a fair bit of scenery as the villainous Greg Stillson. Also it has one of Walken's more notorious lines "The Ice is gonna break!"

As an adaptation, I must say that I don't remember an awful lot about the book, but I do remember that they did slightly change his car accident as in the book he's in the front seat of a taxi not driving his own car and they cut a bit about him getting a similar psychic vision as a child. But ultimately they stuck to the bits of the story that mattered and they seemed to match up to what I can remember.

In His Mind He Has The Power To See The Future, In His Hands He Has The Power To Change It

In Short, I'd say this is a very enjoyable adaptation and worth a watch.