The friends are a
diverse lot; there is the Psychologist Henry (Thomas Jayne),
the professor Gary (Damian Lewis), a car salesman named Pete
(Timothy Olyphant), and the meanderer Beaver (Jason Lee).
Through a series of flashbacks, the audience learns that the
friends share a psychic bond and ability to sense things
resulting from a gift bestowed upon them by a disabled boy
named Douglas who holds a secret.
In the midst of a heavy snowstorm, Beaver and Gary come
across a lost man and take him into their cabin to warm him.
The man appears to be ill, but is very grateful for the
kindness shown to him. Naturally for a film based on a book by
Stephen King, things are not what they seem. Before the four
friends know what hit them, an alien parasite is spreading and
unleashing hostile organisms whose leader is bent on
destroying the world. Of course, the military is not going to
allow this and they have sent Colonel Abraham Kurtz (Morgan
Freeman) and his alien-busting unit to clean house. It seems
that nearly twenty-five years of hunting aliens has driven the
Colonel to the edge. He plans to eradicate the menace by
killing any potential infected people to the chagrin of his
second in command, Captain Underhill (Tom Sizemore), who
states that many of them have a chance for survival.
One would think that with this setup there would have been
some intense action, dazzling FX, and some thrills and chills.
Sadly, there is none of the above, as "Dreamcatcher" is an
absolute mess. The character development is non-existent and
Sizemore and Freeman look as if they would rather be anywhere
but in this film. The dialogue given to some of the cast is so
bad that it gained the loudest groans I have ever heard from
an audience in all of my years as a critic.
Combine this with numerous plot holes and non-sequiters and
you have a recipe for disaster. One would think that a quality
director like Lawrence Kasdan and William Goldman adapting a
good Stephen King story would have produced a much better
film. Instead, we are left with a movie that is so bad and
lacking any saving graces that it should have been left buried
in the snow.
