The Dead Zone
* By Stephen King. I think I need to stop with the old-style King, because it's getting on my nerves. With this book, we had a really cool premise as usual — Johnny gets psychic premonitions as a result of some brain injuries; must face a series of ethical decisions as a result. But the way the book is put together... oo, it just irks me!
In the first half of the book, there's 3 seemingly independent plot threads. These converge eventually, of course. But before this convergence, the 2 non-Johnny threads (serial killer thread and political guy thread) seem totally random and disjointed from the rest of the story! I really think King could have integrated these threads into the Johnny thread through, perhaps, newscasts, town gossip, etc. I think that would have been more effective in creating tension (think Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury... all those subtle mentions of the Lonely One before anything actually happens) and in making a cohesive story line.
That's not the only weak point. This book is oft billed as "this story where this guy Johnny shakes the hand of a politician, sees that he will later be president, and has to decide whether to assassinate him." The rationale is that this politician is an evil dude. Which he really is. But how does Johnny know how evil he is? We never get an explanation. We never really get to hear why it's going to be pure disaster for this politician to be president. Not to the mention the fact that it's hard to swallow that a guy so openly evil as this politician could ever make it to the presidency. Maybe I'm just too naive, but suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
But I can't dis this book entirely, because it kept me reading until the very end, and even made me stay up late to finish it!
Posted by Lisa on November 18, 2001 03:34 PM
Comments
i never read this book, but i believe that i saw the movie with my family when i was younger. i thought, at the time, that it was a good fun movie, and didn't realize until it was over that it was based off of a stephen king book.
who knows if i'd still think it was good if i saw it today, but it might be one of those rare stephen king movies that is good*. and based on your review, the movie might even be better than the book.
* this statement is coming from the pre green-mile/shankshaw redemption days. almost all of the early stephen king movies are terribly, but the exceptions are obviously those two, and the stand: note, stephen king short stories make good movies.
Posted by evan at November 20, 2001 05:06 AM
As long as "The Dead Zone" the movie is better than the *last* Christopher Walken movie I saw. That was "Brainstorm," and my only comment on it is, "BOOP!"
Posted by Lisa at November 21, 2001 09:55 AM