After a horrific car crash, high school teacher Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) wakens from a five year coma with the ability to see into people's future. This extra sensory perception enables him to avert several impending disasters and earns him celebrity status. But those missing years have cost him his job and his fiancé and he longs for his former existence minus his new "gift". That is until he meets local politician and would-be Presidential candidate Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) and sees future events of genuinely cataclysmic proportions. It is only then that Johnny must come to terms with his powers, his conscience and his destiny.