| One of Stephen King's most shapeless, all-but-the-kitchen-sink novels, Dreamcatcher is wrestled by overqualified director-writer Lawrence Kasdan and cowriter William Goldman into an equally shapeless, slightly more entertaining big-budget schlock movie. Mind-reading psychiatrist Thomas Jane, back-from-the-dead road accident victim Damian Lewis, slacker toothpick-chewer Jason Lee and psychic car salesman Timothy Olyphant are King-style thirtysomething buddies who might also evoke Kasdan's The Big Chill, bonded forever by a flashback psychic experience that logically took place in 1983 but with the Stand By Me haircuts, music and milieu of King's own childhood.
On a weekend retreat in the snowy Maine woods, the quartet run into an alien incursion that begins ominously, with animals fleeing the forest but then throws in enough phenomena for a whole season of The X-Files with leftovers that could kit out a video nasty, notably toothy worm parasites memorably named "shit weasels" and a giant ET that turns to red powder and possesses Lewis. Mad militarist Morgan Freeman shows up and claustrophobic lost-in-the-woods business is diluted by a helicopter attack on a downed flying saucer and an internment camp for red-blotched infectees, while the plot boils down to something as simple as a race to prevent a worm from being dropped in a reservoir (which will end the world).
On a scene-by-scene basis, it's entertaining and creepy so long as you don't think too hard about details, like why someone charged with trapping an alien by sitting clamped on the toilet lid would risk reaching down onto a bloody floor to get a toothpick or why the aliens didn't just land by the reservoir in the first place. --Kim Newman
DVD Description Four young friends perform a heroic act and are forever changed by the special powers they gain in return. Years later, the four men who now have separate lives are still haunted by their powers which are more burden than gift. On a hunting trip in the Maine woods, they are overtaken by a vicious storm in which something much more ominous moves. Challenged to stop an alien force, the friends must risk their own lives, with the fate of the world in the balance. Directed by Laurence Kasdan and based on Stephen King’s best-selling novel, Dreamcatcher is guaranteed to chill you to the bone. Starring Morgan Freeman and Jason Lee.
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