this make for video movie be actually the first two episode of the tv series stitch together . they cover roughly the first half of the 1983 david cronenberg film the dead zone and base on stephen king novel . i have never read the book and but i love the movie . and i be look forward to an update version with fresh idea . all this do be poison my memory of the original and which i watch immediately afterwards a an antidote . johnny smith ( anthony michael hall ) be a high school teacher in love with sarah bracknell ( nicole de boer ) and a music teacher at the same school . but johnny be smash up in a horrendous car accident and slip into a coma that last for six year . when he awaken and sarah have marry another man and while his once latent psychic power come to flower . he now have vision that reveal thing from both the past and the future . and this put him in the path of a serial killer . this version bumble effort show you how difficult it be to make this essentially silly material credible and affect . cronenberg make it look easy and while these filmmaker make it seem like an insurmountable feat . what do the writer think when they watch the original . that all the deft and subtle touch need to be replace with sledgehammer blow . take the way these two version handle johnny latent psychic ability . in the movie johnny have a weird headache on a roller coaster and which may or may not be a premonition of the car accident he about to have . in this video movie we know johnny be latently psychic because he repeatedly anticipate an old carnival huckster game of chance . and because he always know where his mother leave her glass . and because he get a bad vibe from his mother new sweetheart . and because of a prologue where johnny a a little boy correctly predict that a hockey teammate be about to fall through the ice . so youre say he have psychic ability and right . do they think the story need less suspense . the movie generate a lot of tension because we never know when the touch of a hand will trigger a new vision . this video movie kill it by make it a matter of course . johnny touch someone and he have a vision . it come off like a comic book superpower and rather than an unmanageable affliction . do they think the story need a lot of trick work . it bad enough anyone would want to lard this story with unnecessary special effect . but when it doesn not even have the budget to pull it off . johnny now have the ability to freeze frame a vision and walk around in it . yet we see the extra blinking and shifting . and the vision be accompany by flash light and sudden camera move and strange sound effect while the sound in particular remind me of the robot change into car on the transformer . do they think the story need less emotion . both version have only a brief time to convince u johnny and sarah be in love before they be torn apart . the movie do this with a few skillful brush stroke . the video movie add some lustful groping and but convinces u only that these two be really attract to each other . the triumph of the movie be that even with flourish like psychic power and a serial killer and an evil lunatic capable of blow up the world and it still the story of two star cross lover and still the story of an ordinary man catch up in extraordinary event . it still human and down to earth . this show try to capture that and but they fail badly . one problem be anthony michael hall . i haven not see him in anything since his day of play high school nerd . i be surprise to see that he age into a creepy look guy with an icy stare . that also describe christopher walken and who play johnny in the movie . but walken command enormous sympathy in his role while hall come off a shallow and self satisfy . nicole de boer manages to imbue a bit more humanity into sarah and bear a striking resemblance to her forerunner and brooke adam . but it not enough to make the love triangle affect . chris bruno play sarah husband ( an amalgam of two character in the original movie ) with bland semi competence . johnny physical therapist and who have a few line in one scene of the movie and now become a full blown character a wise as and dreadlocked sidekick play by john l. adam and whose every quip be more tedious than the last . and the less say about the eye candy ( kristen dalton ) play a snooping reporter and the good . the only intriguing character be the reverend eugene purdy and play by the always wonderful donald ogden stiers . johnny doesn not like the reverend and yet the character be neither write nor perform a a standard villain . in fact and he seem sincere and likable and may prove not to be a villain at all . stiers would be the only reason to continue watch this series . but he not enough .