4. The Dead Zone (1983)
Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Martin Sheen, Tom Skerritt The Dead Zone It is among the better screen adaptations of Stephen Kings work. It deals with the paranormal, has a serial killer, and plenty of unsettling moments without delving into a spectacularly unbelievable climax, something King manages to do in his books on occasion. Director Cronenberg has always been attracted to material thats dark and a little offbeat (read: strange), but The Dead Zone is among his more tame and mainstream directorial efforts. Hes got Walken in the lead role, so how could he go wrong? Movie characters with second sight are often heroes, solving crimes and shining a light into the murkiness of subconscious reality. But in The Dead Zone, the gift is a burden to Walken. He experiences visions when me makes physical contact with another person. He solves a murder case, but is put into a coma after a serious car accident. Time has passed. He has lost his life and his love. So he retreats into solitude, making ends meet my tutoring students. Martin Sheen plays a senator running for President. When Walken meets him and shakes his hand he receives a dark vision of this man, and does not want to get involved. In the end his character is faced with a moral dilemma often illustrated by the classic hypothetical question: knowing what you know, if you could go back in time to Austria in the 1930s, would you murder the art student named Adolf Hitler? Tightly written and directed, with a solid cast, The Dead Zone is one of those films that remains compelling even today.