tek's rating: meh and a half

The Dead Zone (R)
Dread Central (DVD); IMDb; Paramount; Rotten Tomatoes; Stephen King Wiki; TCM; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
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Based on a Stephen King novel. I never really read his stuff and rarely watch his movies. I rarely like his movies much, either. But this was on TV one night, and I like the TV series, and I had nothing better to do. I always thought I should get around to seeing this. So, now I have. Most of the time I was just comparing and contrasting it to the series. I like the show way better than the movie. Anyway, it's about this teacher named Johnny Smith, who's engaged to this other teacher named Sarah. Then he's in a car accident, goes into a coma for five years, and when he wakes up, he starts getting visions of the future when he touches people. He doesn't want this power, plus Sarah's married to some other guy. Then there's this politician named Greg Stillson, who's campaigning for the senate, with ambitions of becoming President someday. Johnny sees him in the future, launching a nuclear attack which is unnecessary, just cuz he wants to go down in the history books, I guess. So Johnny does what he thinks he has to to end the guy's career. Anyway, the creepiest thing about King movies usually seems to me to be the normal stuff. It all seems so unnatural to me, the way everyone acts. And of course in this movie, Johnny is played by Christopher Walken, who's always creepy to begin with.... I dunno what else to say. The movie was okay I guess, but not scary or particularly interesting; mostly boring. I'm glad to have seen it, but I'll probably never want to see it again.


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