Dreamcatcher

Four childhood friends gather at their winter cabin after Jonesy (Lewis) is almost killed in a traffic accident. After a few days of hunting, drinking and reminiscing, Henry (Jane) and Paul (Olyphant) go for supplies while Jonesy and Beaver (Lee) try and bag something for supper. In the forest they run across a man who has been wondering around lost for two days, freezing to death. Taking him back to their cabin, Jonesy and Beaver care for him as best they can but he continues to get more ill and extremely bloated. The two then notice a cavalcade of animals running past the cabin, wondering what was going on they return to the cabin to find the floors covered in blood.

Based on the Stephen King novel, Dreamcatcher is a convoluted mess that should be avoided like the plague.

Movies based on the prolific novelist's work tend to be a mixed bag. You have the good like Stand by Me, The Green Mile, Carrie and Misery, the bad like Pet Semetary, Sleepwalkers and Children of the Corn and the exceptional like The Shawshank Redemption and The Shining. Dreamcatcher unfortunately falls into the extremely bad category.

The movie is a complete mess. Pilfering elements from Independence Day, Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and King's own Stand by Me, the film has more questions than it does answers. Why are the aliens here? What do they want? Why give all four friends telepathic powers then kill two of them off extremely quickly? The list goes on and on, just making you so frustrated.

I expected a lot more from director Lawrence Kasdan. After bringing us great character driven pieces as Silverado, The Big Chill and writing the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, you would have thought that he could handle a Sci-Fi Alien movie based around an ensemble cast but you would be wrong.

While it starts off interestingly enough, the whole thing falls apart when we see the Alien influenced "Sh*t weasels", which have to be some of the worst CGI effects I have seen in many years. The movie then nosedives into idiocy, totally destroying all the good character building that had gone before it until we reach the totally incomprehensible finale, which has even worse special effects and leaves you thinking what the hell happened there?

A lacklustre script seriously undernourishes the good ensemble cast. Morgan Freeman play Colonel Curtis like a pantomime villain with his stupid, sticky up, comedy eyebrows and laughable decent into madness. Damian Lewis tries his best with the possessed Jonesy but for some reason his alien side sounds like a British Colonel from the First World War. Jason Lee needs to fire his agent and return to Kevin Smith movies and Thomas Jane and Tom Sizemore deserve a lot better scripts than this.

Dreamcatcher is a big budget disaster that should have been so much more. Having not read the book I can't comment on the source material but if it is anything like what we have here on screen I don't think I'll bother.

Lifted scenes, Original ending, Interview with Stephen King, 'Dream Weavers: The Visual Effects Of Dreamcatcher' featurette, Trailer, Interactive menu & Scene access

The Usher Home | Hush, Hush... | The Big Story | The Usher Speaks

Stuck @ Home | Coming Soon | Links | Contact the Usher

2003