The Dead Zone

With Christina in North Carolina, I find myself with some serious TV-watching time on my hands. Last night, I watched the movie The Dead Zone, which Christina had seen some time ago. We have been watching the TV series "The Dead Zone", which is based on the novel by Steven King. Well, actually it started up again last summer and TiVo got confused, so we missed a bunch of episodes, but we've seen all of them but seven, six of which we've now got stored on the TiVo.

The point of this (I think) is that I'm familiar with a different version of the same basic plot-line, so I spent more of the movie comparing it to the TV-series than evaluating it on its own merits.

Well, the verdict is in: Christopher Walken is creepier than Anthony Michael Hall. (Well, duh.) That underlies much of the difference between the two plots. Hall plays a much more sympathetic version of "Johnny Smith". I suppose that makes sense -- in an episodic format, you want your audience to sympathize with the main character. I appreciated the creepy element of the movie -- it added an element missing from the series. But overall, I like the series better.

The comparison may be unfair, since the TV series has more time to develop characters. But I like various touches from the series, like Johnny being the father of his ex-girlfriend's son.