Johnny first comes to terms with his power when he agrees to help the police discover the identity of an elusive serial killer walking the streets of Castle Rock (which, for some strange reason, is supposedly located in New Hampshire rather than Maine). This experience only makes him retreat farther into himself, compelling him to move to another town and try to begin a new life within the comfort of his own protective walls. A traumatic vision concerning one of the students he is tutoring leads him to discover a new aspect of his power, and this discovery comes just in time for him to make a difficult decision as to whether or not to sacrifice his own life in order to prevent a truly cataclysmic event from taking place in the future.

David Cronenberg directs this bleak but absorbing film, but don't expect the kind of gore Cronenberg is famous for, as this is not a gore-mired film by any means (although the deaths we do witness are pretty satisfyingly presented). The Dead Zone is a psychological study of human nature and a suspenseful thriller, not a horror movie per se. Martin Sheen leaves an unforgettable mark on the film with his portrayal of as slimy and dangerous a politician as you would ever want to meet (and, as a side note, impersonating Elvis Presley's voice apparently goes over big among New England voters for some reason).

A lot of care and detail went into the making of The Dead Zone, and it shows. The atmosphere is dark and palpable from start to finish, and Christopher Walken commands the viewer's rapt attention at all times. There are a number of very moving scenes, particularly in relation to Johnny's new relationship with his former fiancée, so don't be surprised if Walken coaxes a tear or two out of the corners of your eyes. Many of the early movies based on King novels did not translate to the big screen very effectively, but The Dead Zone is an often overlooked and very impressive exception.

One would expect that in a film featuring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen, Walken would play the villain and Sheen the hero. This film turns that assumption neatly on its head, and it's a wise choice, too; for all his talent and oddball appeal, Walken does not have the type of oily charisma needed for Greg Stillson, the character Sheen plays. Sheen, however, does a terrific (though at times over-the-top) job of playing a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing politician, a far cry from the saintly President Bartlett he currently plays on TV's "The West Wing."

Walken's performance as Johnny Smith (great name) is more muted--although that scene where he smashes the vase and yells "THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK!" never fails to startle me--and he hits all of the right notes playing a protagonist who is atypically complex for movies, and certainly for "horror" movies (the genre this movie is generally relegated to). Smith starts out righteously wounded, then becomes withdrawn and self-pitying, and finally is faced with a Cassandra-like dilemma (he knows the dreadful future, and also that no one will believe him), but unlike Cassandra, he can do something to prevent it, even though it will mean sacrificing himself. With this knowledge, he realizes that what he'd thought was a curse was really a gift, as he himself says.

This film is also atypical for the "horror" genre in that it has more than its share of heartbreaking scenes. The scene that is most so, for me anyway, is when Smith tells Sarah (Brooke Adams, who gives another of the film's roundly excellent performances) that he wishes to be like Irving's Ichabod Crane: "And as he was a bachelor and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled their heads about him anymore."