The Dead Zone: Fighting the future

"The missiles are flying! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"

Feb 25, 2026

The Dead Zone might be Stephen King’s most audacious work of all. That’s a hell of a statement given the prolific writer’s output, one that has included psychokinetic kids, ghostly possession, pets that rise from the dead, and a shapeshifting clown who lives in the sewer, but King accomplishes something remarkable in The Dead Zone. He makes you root for the assassin.

That was no small trick in 1979, when the book was published. America was still gripped by a sort of PTSD from the assassinations of the previous decade, along with various traumas that included the end of the Vietnam War and the resignation of a president. Gerald Ford, who assumed office after Richard Nixon stepped down, was twice the target of potential shooters. The nation’s nerves remained a bit frayed.

But King being King, he wasn’t much interested in soothing anyone. His premise was both wildly inventive and as simple as a t-shirt turned inside-out: What if the assassin were acting out of principle and the target, a political candidate, had it coming? What if, in fact, the fate of the world depended on the assassin carrying out his plan?

By the time the filmed version of the book came out in 1983, President Ronald Reagan had survived an attack on his life, granting King’s story even more relevance (and it was an assault where the motives of the shooter, John Hinckley, became public fodder).

Stephen King has been a popular writer for more than 50 years, but the 1980s might have been his apex. Even as his bestsellers hit the shelves, adaptations of earlier works rolled off as if they were on an assembly line (admittedly of varying quality): Carrie, The Shining, Christine, Cujo, Firestarter, Stand by Me, The Running Man. Later would come more deeply felt works such as Misery and The Shawshank Redemption. Today, King is still writing, still churning out stories and inspiring a legion of wanna-be novelists. He is nothing less than an American legend.

King’s works often could be elevated by the right director. Think Brian DePalma on Carrie or Stanley Kubrick and The Shining. That’s the case with The Dead Zone, in which a young Canadian director, David Cronenberg, landed the assignment. Working with screenwriter Jeffrey Boam, Cronenberg, who would go on to helm movies such as The Fly and A History of Violence (both also about men who transform), stripped down the story to its essence.

The result was a lean, economical horror-thriller that moves in a straightforward fashion and never plays tricks with its audience. Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken, an ideal choice) is a shy teacher in a quiet New England town who is grievously injured in a car accident. He emerges from a five-year coma (looking quite refreshed) and soon discovers he has the ability to see psychic images when he touches a person’s hand. He prevents a young girl from dying in a fire and later, helps the local sheriff nab a serial killer. The film never stoops to overdramatics; Johnny’s transformation is subtle, but over time, his demenor, his hair, his gaunt look and dark pea coat combine to slowly make him otherwordly.

Still, Johnny wants no part of it. Despite widespread media attention, he seeks a quiet life as a tutor. (Any parent who would send their kid to him given his history might a bit suspect, but again nobody was helicoptering back then.) Fate intervenes when he touches the hand of a candidate for U.S. Senate, Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen). Johnny is overcome by a vision of Stillson, as president, launching a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union and bringing the world to the edge of annihilation. Haunted by past visions that include others being murdered without his intervention, Johnny becomes determined to stop Stillson.1

The casting of Sheen was a masterstroke. Although audiences were probably familiar with his work in films such as Badlands and Apocalypse Now, some might have recalled Sheen playing Bobby Kennedy in the 1974 TV drama The Missiles of October, about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later in 1983, Sheen would star as JFK himself in another TV production.

That added a metatextual element to King’s tale – that the Irish Catholic, affable Sheen would resemble one of the long-lost Kennedys, albeit a warped, sideshow version. His Stillson is a phony populist, one obsessed with power, who favors straight talk about those bozos in Washington and likes to sport a hard hat to display his working-class bona fides. (He nails that Reagan Democrat/Moral Majority vibe that was so prevalent in ‘83.) He isn’t particularly charismatic, but that may be the point. There are a thousands Stillsons out there, more every day – and it isn’t without possibility that one could find his hand on the nuclear trigger. In interviews since the movie was released, Cronenberg has said that presidents such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump came to remind him of Stillson.

As I noted above, Cronenberg made a choice to tell the story almost entirely from Johnny’s subjective point of view. That means that as viewers, we are privy to his visions and ultimately conclude that he has the powers he claims to have — that he is, basically, a reliable narrator. But imagine a movie in which Walken claims to be haunted by images of the future that we never see. His decision then to stop Stillson becomes more morally queasy – you might end up with something like Taxi Driver. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a better movie, but it would be a wildly different one.2 How many gunmen have been driven by their own sense of purpose, one often indistingishable from madness?

For King and Cronenberg, however, The Dead Zone better served as a metaphor for personal responsibility and taking action. (“Johnny Smith” might as well be called “Everyman.”) On some level, many of us have an idea of what a possible dystopian future could look like. Do we just let it happen or do something about it? Unfortunately for us, we don’t have 20-20 foresight. The truth is, unlike Johnny, we never know if the decisions we make are the right ones. We take it on faith.

WHERE CAN I WATCH IT: The Dead Zone is rentable on all major platforms. I can’t speak to the spinoff TV series starring Anthony Michael Hall.

HEY ISN’T THAT: I’ve always been a fan of Tom Skerritt, who plays the local sheriff, and have felt like he should have had a bigger career. But let’s go with Herbert Lom, who plays Johnny’s psychiatrist. Lom was best known at the time for being Inspector Clouseau’s deranged boss in the Pink Panther movies.

ARMAGEDDON INDEX: (7/10): Quite a bit is on the line here.

DUST CLOUDS: As I have noted in this space previously, late 1983, when The Dead Zone was released, might have been one of the most pivotal periods of the Cold War. The Soviet shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 weeks earlier had deepened mistrust between Washington and Moscow. NATO was moving ahead with plans to deploy new missiles in Western Europe, while Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and his intelligence services watched for signs of a possible first strike.

As NATO prepared its November exercise Able Archer 83—simulating nuclear release procedures with unusual realism—Soviet officials reportedly grew alarmed. Tensions rose further on October 25, when the United States invaded Grenada. By month’s end, suspicion and miscalculation had created a climate of genuine nuclear anxiety.

TOP OF THE POPS: Number one on the Billboard charts when The Dead Zone was released was the inescapable “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. (“Every now and then, I get a little bit terrified.”) Pop melodrama + paranoia was very ‘83.

WHAT ELSE AM I WATCHING: TV: The Night Manager (S2, Amazon), 11-22-63 (S1, Netflix), The Pitt (S2, HBO). Movies: Train Dreams (Bentley, 2025), About Last Night… (Zwick, 1986), Blue Moon (Linklater, 2025).

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