The Dead Zone is my favourite of David’ Cronenberg’s movies.

At university, I once wrote a dissertation on Cronenberg’s earlier ‘body horror’ movies – including Shivers, Rabid and Scanners. These were all typically set in a Canadian winter and are fundamentally very cold, dour and disturbing movies, with little known casts. They had a pretence towards art (which must have helped at least with getting funding from the Canadian Film Board), but were renowned primarily for icky set pieces – case in point being the exploding head scene in Scanners! 

Videodrome, with James Woods, was the first time Cronenberg had a really good actor in the lead, and I like that movie a lot, even though it all gets rather incomprehensible towards the end. But I think The Dead Zone surpasses that. Based on a Stephen King novel, it is again winter-set, but Christopher Walken’s performance in the lead gives the movie a pathos and gravitas missing entirely from his earlier movies. 

Cronenberg also notably reins in the gore this time – aside from one death by scissors to the brain suicide in the middle it is largely restrained, and character-driven. Martin Sheen as the corrupt, populist Senator on a path to the White House is also a memorable antagonist. One cannot help but see eerily prescient parallels to the rise of Trump in how close he comes to abusing the reins of power!

Cronenberg made one more horror classic after this – The Fly – before broadening his repertoire.  Of his later movies, I really like A History Of Violence, which like The Dead Zone asks the question of what lengths one might go to in order to ultimately save innocent people’s lives. But I do wish he might go back to his horror roots again.,..

These are a selection of stills from the movie which I picked up upon release at a press screening.