Dreamcatcher (2003)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: Four life-long friends with a shared unique telepathic gift encounter a massive invasion from parasitic aliens. 

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• OK, I’ve been doing all these 80/90s Stephen King flicks, it’s high time I watch something more fairly recent. And by high time I mean I wish I was high.
• Screenplay by William Goldman AND Lawrence Kasdan? Holy shit this should be fucking fantastic.
• Although, I remember this bombing bigly back in 2003.
• It’s always a good therapy session when your patient runs out on you and moments later the shrink puts a revolver to his noggin.
• So far we’ve met 3 fellas and they all “know” things that they shouldn’t. Don’t know yet if they’re psychics or from the future or they’re all Bill Murray from Groundhog Day.
• Who buys Mars bars these days?! I have trouble even finding Mars bars. Is this set in the 80s?
• These psychics aren’t even trying to be subtle about their abilities. In fact they are freaking people out.
• Damian Lewis just casually walked into traffic and met the business end of a high speeding sedan. Nice.
• Jason Lee starts a conversation by saying: “Got blown last night.”
• And it was some woman he met in a church bingo game.
• Jason Lee’s name or nickname is “Beaver” by the way. Ugh.
• Damian Lewis is still alive. Not sure how I feel about that.
• These fellas with the special abilities see and listen to an invisible half naked boy.
• Are these guys longtime friends or did they just meet? They have terrible chemistry.

• I think we’re seeing the literal manifestation of Damian Lewis’ memories like as in a warehouse of files and cabinets. And Lewis inside sorting his library of memories. This movie has way too much going on conceptually.
• So in this 20 year old flashback the main characters encounter four other asshole kids trying to make, what I assume is, the invisible naked kid eat dog shit. They threaten the older kids by saying they’ll tell everyone including their folks. For some odd reason this works and the older kids leave.
• So this kid they rescued has a mental issue. Nothing wrong with this, I’m just letting you know.
• Never thought I’d see Jason Lee be a hunter in a movie.
• Damian Lewis happens upon a man lost in the woods in the dead of winter.
• The drifter asks what a dreamcatcher is. Really dude? There was a massive fad in the 90s and 2000’s of inappropriate amount of dreamcatchers hanging from idiots’ car rear-view mirrors. How did this guy miss this?
• Timothy Olyphant gives an excuse about drinking at 11:00 am. I’m curious; why is there a stigma about drinking a beer or anything other than a Mimosa or Bloody Mary before noon? What the fuck does the time of day have to do with anything? I never understood this.
• Why is Jason Lee keep saying Jesus Christ Bananas?
• The drifter has some gnarly gas. 
• What joke am I missing that Thomas Jane and Timothy Olyphant are cracking up at after a horrific car accident. Luckily they are both fine but I don’t know what they’re laughing at exactly. Unless they think totaling their truck and nearly killing themselves is a hoot.
• There’s another drifter in the woods, this time a woman in the middle of the road who Thomas Jane and Olyphant nearly hit and she too has wicked farts. Is this movie a practical joke?
• Hey remember when these four friends all had death wishes? Whatever happened to that sub-plot? Wish it was back in play so the movie would be over quicker.
• Well this is interesting. The drifter that was being helped by Lee and Lewis is profusely bleeding and is in the bathroom supposedly taking a shit. Lee and Lewis break into the bathroom to help him but he seems to already be dead on the crapper. They nudge him and he falls off the toilet head first and Kasdan thought it was a good idea to show the guy’s bloody and shitty ass on the way down. I’m seriously thinking this movie is supposed to be a comedy.
• Now there’s some sort of creature in the toilet and Lee is sitting on the lid to contain it. This movie IS a comedy!
• Lee fails when he just has to reach down for a fucking toothpick and the snakelike monster overpowers his ass. The fact that he just needed a toothpick that was laying on a dirty and bloody bathroom floor is retarded.
• This monster is strong as hell for being a 3-foot snake thing with a perpendicular mouth.
• Now there’s a huge Alien-like creature in the cabin. Lewis asks him what it wants and the alien’s head explodes in a cloud of red dust. Is that how it communicates? Kinda like the septapods in Arrival? Or did it, too, fart in Lewis’ face?

• What the fuck is going on?
• Never thought I’d see a movie with Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore in the same scene.
• They call the alien “Ripley?” Sheesh.
• Shit Weasels? Hahahaha. Freeman just referred to the snake-like creatures as Shit Weasels. Brilliant. But I already call most politicians shit weasels.
• Is Tom Sizemore’s name Bucko or is that just what Freeman calls him? It’d be hilarious if his name was Robert Bucko.
• Morgan Freeman is a bad ass. One of his subordinates lies to him and gives a scouts honor salute and Freeman shoots off one of his fingers.
• Wait. John Wayne gave Morgan Freeman a pistol? For what? And I find that hard to believe since, well, Wayne was a bit of a racist.
• I’m assuming that the way Damian Lewis is trying to act cool that he’s possessed by a “Ripley.”
• Now’s a good enough time to admit that I kinda dislike Damian Lewis.
• Olyphant is talking to himself as he slowly gets drunk as he watches over the lady drifter with a shit weasel that already escaped her dead ass.
• So this is essentially an Alien ripoff. The shit weasels are like the face huggers that gestate in a host and the “Ripleys” are the Xenomorphs.
• Lewis is having a split personality conversation between himself and an Englishman named “Mr. Gray.” It’s very confusing. And annoying. Is this movie trying to tell us that the parasitic alien inside Lewis’ mind talks like James Corden? Why?!
• I’m so mystified right now. I couldn’t be more mystified if I was playing the game Myst while drinking a Sierra Mist while listening to Father John Misty cover Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop.”
• Speaking of mist opportunities, I’m not going to review King’s The Mist because it’s a great fucking movie.
• Now Mr. Gray is threatening Olyphant, who miraculously survived a shit weasel attack, and the real Lewis is now stuck in that Memory Bank that we saw earlier in the film. The parasitic alien is trying to get in one particular room in his memory and Lewis is locked inside. This is some heavy shit.
• Also Olyphant has some sort of super power that he can shoot energy from his fingers. Or something like that. Did he always have that power? Because why didn’t he use it when he was being attacked by a shit weasel?
• I actually like Thomas Jane a lot. But he is in a lot of shitty movies.
• I almost forgot that these 4 (now 3) guys had some sort of “shining” powers which they haven’t used since the beginning of the flick.
• A shit weasel is laying eggs that look like Brussels sprouts.
• I know these things are aliens and all but most creatures if not all on earth have a gestation period that lasts longer than 20 minutes. This shit weasel’s eggs were laid and hatched within a short hour or so. Ridiculous. Even the Xenomorphs in Aliens at least took a day or two.
• Now there’s a flashback sub-plot back when the boys and Duddits solves a missing girl mystery.
• In the flashback, the Olyphant kid does that finger power thing and I’m still not 100% what it does. Maybe it’s like a portal where he can see the past or future?
• What is it with Stephen King and weird outcast kids in tunnels. Does Maine have a shitload of tunnels for kids to play around in?

• Morgan Freeman is terribly miscasted as the gung-ho bad ass army commander.
• In fact, 87% of this movie is totally off.
• I’m still not sure if they actually are the army or a part of the American armed forces. They look like it but they are going into battle against a huge crashed alien spaceship in the middle of the Maine forest. This flick is all over the place.
• It’s really really annoying getting the armchair commentary from the locked up in his mind Damian Lewis. Equally annoying is the British accent he’s doing. Which is really strange considering Lewis is Irish and probably already has a decent sounding accent. But in this it sounds like he’s playing an American poorly doing an English accent.
• And now there’s an alien creature chasing Lewis in his memory bank. This film surely is bold with its ideas.
• Freeman just quoted Danny Glover. Weird.
• “If 3-star General Matheson were in my spot for the last quarter century, you’d never make it to your first jerk-off.” Hahahaha. Wait. What?
• I wonder if Morgan Freeman’s eyebrows are extensions or a wig or if actually grew them out for this role. Is there such a thing as eyebrow wigs? Lemme go check. Yup. They do in fact exist.

• So now General Matheson (sorry, 3-star General Matheson) has assumed command and is halting the alien-hunting-whatever-it-is operation. Meanwhile Thomas Jane has convinced Tom Sizemore to help him escape so he can locate and stop the possessed Damian Lewis.
• What would ever possess Lawrence Kasdan to be involved with this?!
• I know Sizemore trusts Thomas Jane but should he really trust him when he asks if he can check out his pistol?
• Now Jane is talking to an imaginary phone to Lewis somehow. We don’t hear what Lewis says so it completely looks like Jane is utterly insane.
• Now they’re picking up Duddits who’s dying of leukemia and his mom thinks joining Jane and Sizemore to save the world will somehow be a more fitting way to die.
• Holy shit, Duddits is Donnie Walhberg? I barely recognize him.
• It’s bad enough that Mark Wahlberg has a prolific film career, do we really need Donnie too?
• Duddits has a mental problem and can’t talk correctly. So whenever he says “Mr. Gray” it sounds like “Mr. Gay.”
• There’s no way William Goldman wrote this. I refuse to believe it.
• This movie is so all-over-the-Place that I lapsed in my paying attention and now I don’t know where Lewis is (some kind of cabin with a sewer manhole in it) and he has a dog. I don’t know where he got the dog nor do I know why the dog is injured or needed for Lewis’ plan.
• Now Freeman in a helicopter is attacking Sizemore and before he shoots him up, Sizemore manages to shoot the tail rotor making the helicopter lose control and crash and explode. Just like Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run. Man, do I wish I was watching Midnight Run right now.
• A shit weasel just jumped and landed with its mouth on the barrel of Thomas Jane’s machine gun and Jane fumbled to actually pull the trigger but then he does and shoots the thing off. Very exciting.
• I’m bored.
• Duddits taunts Mr. Gray (who’s out of Lewis now and is a giant monster) by saying “Scooby Scooby Doo. We have some work to do now.” I failed to mention earlier that Duddits is obsessed with Scooby-Doo.
• Both Lewis and Jane sit on their asses as Duddits gets attacked by the monster and they do absolutely nothing but watch Duddits get annihilated. Jane even has a machine gun if I recall.
• Now Duddits turned into a monster (because reasons) and it’s a monster vs. monster fight. But don’t get your hopes up because it’s more of a quick hug, both monsters meld into each other and in a puff of red dust they are gone. I don’t even have enough time to comment that it looks more like the Ripley monster and the Duddits monster are fucking each other.
• And that’s fucking it?! Wow this was incredibly terrible.

Scare Level: The creature effects weren’t that bad actually and it’s a shame we only really see the shit weasels for most of the movie. The human-like alien we only see once and then it possesses Damian Lewis. Other than that. nothing was remotely scarier than Morgan Freeman’s eyebrows.

Gore Level: A decent amount actually. Especially on that dead fat guy’s naked ass.

Nudity Level: Dead naked guy taking a shit.

Best Line: “If 3-star General Matheson were in my spot for the last quarter century, you’d never make it to your first jerk-off.”

Best Scene: Before the film turned into a complete and utter farce, the tension was great when Lee and Lewis were trying to get in the bathroom to help the sick drifter. The film quickly unraveled after that.

Worst Scene: Typical King movie ending. Dumb monster fight.

Stephen King References: Derry, Maine; Car accident; Tightly bonded friends; Shining ability

Overall: I’ve heard from reliable sources and critics and especially some friends that saw this in theatres back in 2003 that this was a total turd. So now was the perfect time to give it a look-see for myself. What are Schlocktoberfests for, right? Besides, I could’ve been a total ass and had to review Guns of El Chupacabra. Dreamcatcher was no exercise in Zen filmmaking thankfully, but it was a complete misfire. The real shame was all the talent involved and still this film is an unmitigated disaster. Why are there so many really disappointing Stephen King adaptations? Like I’ve said before, I don’t read King so I have no idea if this film strayed far from the source material or what but I don’t know what’s worse, this story as I’ve just seen it as a popular book or a film that diverted from a good book and ended up absolute garbage. A question for the ages.

Score: 3 Eyebrow Wigs (out of 10)

 

For our other Stephen King movie reviews, check out:

The Dark Tower

Thinner

Children of the Corn

Tales From the Darkside

Creepshow 2

The Night Flier

Cat’s Eye