User reviews

No pun intended - I think I had seen the movie before. But I do know I read the book, so maybe I am just mixing those two things up. Because (re)watching the movie ... I couldn't remember most of it ... if any. Mind you the CGI has dated quite badly. But the actors in this ... great cast! And it makes sense - this is a Stephen King movie/book, so everyone and their dog wants to be in it of course.

Flashbacks to what made our main characters the way they are (because this is not our reality, at least not one I am aware of, having people with abilities in it and all that). If you like horror movies, I reckon you could do worse. But if I remember correctly the book is better ... yeah I know that's almost always the case ... but I thought I mention it anyway.

As Stephen King fans should probably know, there are a lot of things in Stephen Kings books that make sense only where they are - that is, in Stephen King books. Translating them to film is usually a bad idea, as many filmmakers who had adapted King's books before probably figured out. But along comes Lawrence Kasdan, a talented and acclaimed veteran director, who, with the aid of a no less acclaimed screenwriter William Goldman, decides while writing a script for Dreamcathcer that it would be better to bring along all the trademark King's weird goings-on - and voila! We have a movie filled with telepathy, butt-ripping aliens, crazy military types keen on killing everyone, telephone-guns, indian symbols and even a lot of CGI thrown in for a good measure. Of course, it all fails - but oh how gloriously! I'll go as far as to state that Dreamcatcher is absolutely the best unintentional B-movie trashfest in years! It was totally amusing that such a bunch of undoubtedly talented people (Morgan Freeman, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane, besides aforementioned Kasdan & Goldman) were able to make this film without a single smirk - while the material is pure trash'n'cheese. That was the whole beauty of it, for me, at least - the level of money, work and talent that went into creating this film. I would like to personally thank all the people involved with Dreamcathcer - they made my year! Thank you, Lawrence Kasdan! Thank you, William Goldman! Thank you, Morgan Freeman - your eyebrows rocked! And most of all, thank you, Jason Lee - the bathroom scene involving Beaver and an alien worm under the toilet lid is pure classic!

Man, where does Stephen King comes up with this things? Again, we have the childhood friends we think we know from "Stand by me" only this time they're older, have weird powers and face some really nasty creatures. I just come from watching it for the first time and i just wanted to say: What a weird movie!! I've seen some really weird movies, but this one... It's sort of a mixture of horror, sci-fi, comedy... At some point you don't know whether to be disgusted or to laugh! The special efects are great, and so is the music ("On blue bayou..."}. It may not be a great movie, but it's great entertainment. And it's sooooooo insane!!!! I liked it. Go see it. 7/10

For me this is one of the better Stephen King adaptations, largely due to the exceptional cast.

The plot is a bit iffy but the relationship between the 'boys' is quite engaging.

Worth a look :)

I have read Dreamcatcher and think it is one of King's most under-appreciated books. In an interview, King said his wife didn't care for it. King wrote it out on a yellow legal pad while he was recovering from getting hit by that van.

I have also listened to the audio version of Dreamcatcher, so all that remained for me was to see this movie. While I knew there were things in the book that probably wouldn't make it to the screen, I was pleasantly surprised by how many did. However some scenes were so brief they were little more than tributes.

The cinematography was beautiful from start to finish, but where the first half of the film felt paced to perfection, the last half felt rushed. The ending was different than the book, so be prepared for a shocker.

The acting was good, I particularly enjoyed Jason Lee as Joe 'Beaver' Clarenden and Damian Lewis as Gary 'Jonesy' Jones.

A real disappointment was Thomas Jane as Dr. Henry Devlin. Pretty woody acting there.

Before seeing this movie, I would not have believed that Morgan Freeman could play Kurtz. I was wrong. That guy can play anything. Unfortunately, He didn't get enough chances to flesh out this crazy S.O.B.

Jonsey's dual nature was handled differently in the movie than it was in the book. Too bad. It was just right in the book, and was given a more "Hollywood" treatment in the movie.

Note to the director: This movie failed because not enough time was spent introducing these characters and making us care about them. The notable exceptions to this where Jonesy and the Beav.

Remember: SSDD.

No Bounce, No Play.

This is a pretty good movie. Exciting, nerve wracking and enough scary parts to keep you entertained. I don't get the low ratings honestly. I never read the book so maybe that favored in, but as a stand alone movie From 2003 I thought it was enjoyable.

The guy from homeland sucks though. Worst actor ever.

The mix of horror, thriller, spectacular science fiction and realistic science-fiction is not balanced very well and makes it confusing to see what you are actually watching.

The movie is interesting in the beginning but after about an hour the movie goes wild and all of the sudden we get a whole different story and movie. I don't blame the directing, I blame the story. The movie also leaves more question than answers.

And what was Morgan Freeman doing in this? Don't be fooled people, his role is actually a fairly small one. Come to think of it, his role was an totally unnecessary one. Also Tom Sizemore seemed to be walking around in this movie without having any idea what he was doing.

The movie had quite some potential but the execution of it is sloppy. The movie also fails to get scary and tense, instead the scene's get more comical in a way. Even though the movie is about 135 minutes long, it still feels short and very rushed, probably because there are too many story lines going on at once. Also the ending was quite disappointing.

Certainly watchable because of the directing, cinematography, special effects and soundtrack but it's not a must see.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

This Stephen King adaptation is underrated, sure it has it's flaws, it's a mishmash of many things in some sense it fails to find it's bearings. But that is only in the surface, in all it's weirdness these is a sense. Hard to grasp and see at first, I revisited this movie almost a decade later.

I didn't recall this movie to be anything impressive or mind-blowing. Yep upon a recent viewing I find my self pleasantly surprise by this flick. Dreamcatcher isn't Stephen King's best book by a long shot. The four main actors gave stellar performances, John Seale's cinematography is simply perfect for this. Damian Lewis is simply genius in his role.

Do your self a favor, watch this movie, ignore the low rating.

Friends on a camping trip , they meet for a weekend at their remote cabin in the forests and discover that the town they're vacationing in, is being plagued in an unusual fashion by parasitic aliens from outer space . Four friends : Thomas Jane as Henry , Jason Lee as Beaver , Damian Lewis as Jonesy and Timothy Olyphant as Pete share extrasensory powers and hung a dreamcatcher in their cabin. It's about to catch something it cannot stop and the things are definitely going awry . Meanwhile , military officers (Morgan Freeman , Tom Sizemore) attempt to stop them and we reach the final highlight with the future of mankind at danger.

This Sci-Fi movie contains , thrills , suspense , intrigue , strange events and is pretty entertaining . The film is a blend of genres as a yucky monsters movie , a military paranoia picture and drama about childhood with influence on adult life ; all of them squashed into one . Being difficult to muster these diverse elements and director fails partially in its union . It's a rendition of a Stephen King novel , King sold the movie rights for $1 . There were many references to other Stephen King projects, such as: Misery (car wreck in the snow); Stand by Me (boyhood friends walking on railroad tracks , a typical Stephen King nostalgia vignette); It (flashbacks showing growing friendships), etc. And of course the story taking place in Maine - Stephen King's state of birth. This was the story that Stephen wrote while he recovered from his near fatal accident , it is reflected in the story, especially in a graphic scene in which a major character in run down by a vehicle and he wrote the novel in longhand. This marks the third film that William Goldman has adapted from a Stephen King novel , the others were Hearts in Atlantis (2001) and Misery (1990).

Rousing musical score by the successful composer James Newton Howard . Colorful though dark cinematography by John Seale . This moving Sci-fi , as long as spectacular, has become a nice film , being finely written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan who also directed other genres as Western as ¨Wyatt Earp¨ and ¨Silverado¨. Furthermore , he made other good movies as ¨Body heat¨, ¨The big chill¨ , ¨Grand Canyon¨ . Rating : 6 , acceptable and passable but overlong as the runtime is approx two hours and some . Even those who don't usually like Science Fiction or monster movies are sure to enjoy it . Worthwhile watching .

When John Grisham or Stephen King writes a book, everyone can expect it to be turned into some sort of movie that's not as good (the only one that hasn't had that happen to it is the latter's Insomnia-and it really deserves to be made into something great) as the book was. Of course, there's exceptions (such as The Shining and Carrie-both of which were poorly remade), but one that makes the book look like string cheese is Dreamcatcher. The book was 1000 pages of hit-or-miss horror, and the movie condenses it into two and a quarter hours that takes most of the best parts from the book. Having doubted William Goldman's ability since Marathon Man and the partial butchering of Misery, but since he's writing here with director Lawrence Kasdan, he can't foul up that badly.

The hardest part of having the arduous task of adapting a King book is taking 1000+ pages and putting it into a reasonable amount of time for the viewer. That's why the miniseries are always hot to trot, because they can stretch things out to the length of the book. Trouble is, eventually, it gets boring and too true to the book. That's how the aforementioned remakes failed. Filmmakers need to be able to have creative licenses, and that's what Kasdan does. He knows how to work with the material that he and Goldman wrote, and it turns out to be something much better than the source material.

Four childhood friends, Beaver (Jason Lee), Henry (Thomas Jane), Jonesy (Damian Lewis) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant), go to some woods in Maine for their annual hunting trip. In their childhood, they had been united by a mentally retarded friend, Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg), which linked all of them with some sort of telepathy that they usually don't talk about. During their twentieth year of going out there, aliens land nearby and alter the course of their lives forever. Meanwhile, Col. Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman, with the named changed from the original Kurtz, a reference to Apocalypse Now, because I guess hearing a name will automatically trigger the "plagiarism" sensor in viewer's minds more than reading it) is in charge of the governmental side of the aliens, while he supposedly goes crazy. For those who thought Jack Nicholson's transformation in The Shining happened too quickly, they obviously haven't seen Dreamcatcher.

I think the reason most people didn't like Dreamcatcher is that they didn't know what the hell was going on. I can understand it, since some of the most important stuff is just referenced in passing (such as most things relating to Mr. Gray). I thought that all of the Curtis subplot seemed to drag everything down, because everything that's done there could have been brought about some other way. But much of the movie is pretty scary, despite the absurdity of not only some of the aliens and the CGI, but the ending. I didn't have that many qualms with it, but those who did probably also complained with the oddity of the ending of The Hulk (understandably). The plot held up through all of the reductions, and makes an effectual, creepy film.

The acting, however, could have been better. Although Jason Lee is always good, all of his catchphrases that his character had in the book seemed scripted and stilted. The actor who played Beaver as a child also seemed to just be reading his lines. The other actors don't really bring any personality to their roles, although Lewis's "dual role" was pretty cool. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of material in this film, but when you think about it, it all flows together pretty well. And considering you're taking 1000 pages into a 135 page script, that's pretty good to have everything flow together. My respect for William Goldman has come back, as for good horror films. Dreamcatcher is not the best King adaptation, or the best King book, but it's entertaining and creepy, and that's all we ask for from Mr. King.

My rating: 7/10

Rated R for violence, gore and language.

Yet another failed King adaptation brought to the screen, completely missing everything that made the book good. While the novel was a sort of best-of-King medley, the film focuses too much on the sci fi and action elements of the story. This means that most of the characterization and plot coherency is gone.

The film starts out decent enough and stays pretty true to the book for about half of the running time, but then the movie shifts gear and turns plain silly. The book isn't exactly easy to adapt for the screen (things like Jonesy hiding in his own head), but some of the choices the screenwriters did are just moronic (the ending is painfully bad).

The acting feels kind of stilted (probably due to lack of background story), and most of the characters are just anonymous faces. This leaves you with a film that sure looks good and feels expensive, but that can't hide the fact that their trying to hide the cheesy script behind a layer of visual effects. King definitely works best on the page. [3/10]

I have never read the book, I have only read a small handful of Stephen King's works ... they're generally not my preferred genre. I could go on here, but I don't think most of you care if you are reading this.

Okay, I liked the movie. I would rate it around 7 or 8 for sheer entertainment factor. Sure, there were a few scenes that were a little thin, there were a few elements of dialogue (sp: I'm Canadian, eh?) that were a little weak. But since I didn't even know this was a SK movie, I had absolutely no predisposition regarding this movie.

In fact, I hadn't even reviewed any of the synopses or shorts regarding this film ... I was totally green going into it. And I found myself highly entertained. I liked seeing a bunch of characters whom I am not entirely familiar with, and I appreciated the casting of a few well-knows.

Enjoyment: 8 Cast: 8 Acting: 6 for some, 7 or 8 for others. Dialogue: 6 in general CGI: 7 (pretty good, but lots of 'off screen' stuff) Overall: 7

This is a film that HAS to be seen to be believed. A big budget, high caliber talent absolute piece of crap. One of the worst movies I have ever seen - not to say I didn't laugh out loud and that my friends didn't enjoy just how awful and unbelievable the movie is - but aside from the money they put into the special effects, the "story" and some of the acting is total trash. Stepehen King wrote the book after his accident and admits to be high on painkillers and morphine while writing it and it shows - its almost as if he was slipping in and out of a morphine dream and stealing from himself - a little "Stand By Me" a little "It", a little "Dead Zone" - what the hell. The movie goes off on so many tangents it makes your head spin - four friends befriend a strange disabled boy - basically a human E.T. - and he gives them psychic powers - only they don't have the powers for huge, long stretches of the film, which go unexplained - in fact, there are many scenes where characters sit still in one place and give long, boring speeches where they are desperately trying to explain the "plot". The movie does have EVERYthing - nostalgic flashbacks a la Stand By Me with smart alecky kids bonding over turmoil, icky horrid monsters and lots of blood coming out of animal's and human's anus, military powers trying to control a sickness, psychic abilities, car crashes, snow storms, horrible male bonding banter like out of Lowenbrau beer commercials, aliens, spaceships, evil powers overtaking people's minds - it's as if they threw ALL of King's stories into a blender and then this goopy mess was poured into THIS movie. The actor who plays Jonesy (that's another thing - the four buddies all call each clever lame nicknames like Jonesy, H and Beav - yes, that's right, BEAV!!!!) gives one of the worst performances ever captured on film once the alien force takes over his brain and he starts talking like two people - the good one and the evil one (the evil one has a British accent!!!!) - anyway, yes, you could open some beers and watch with friends and howl with delight at how awful it really is - but seriously, the movie itself - even with Kasdan behind the camera and the great Wm. Goldman writing the screenplay, is an utter and total train-wreck. Just awful!

Plot heavy--TOO heavy--horror sci-fi film about 4 friends (Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis) in the Maine woods squaring off against disgusting killer aliens and the Army led by Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore.

The film is well-directed by Lawrence Kasdan and well-acted (especially by Jane, Lewis and Olyphant) but there's too many plots going on and the movie rambles on for 135 minutes. I did sit through the whole thing, but I was never really involved or interested.

On the plus side, the special effects are great; the aliens are slimy and disgusting; the attack scenes are brutal (and bloody) and I LOVED the way Kasdan visualized Lewis' mind.

Still, the film has too many plots to handle and it's constantly loosing its focus. Not terrible or unwatchable, just disappointing.

I give it a 6.

I only saw a portion of this movie on cable ( somewhere around where they meet the infected farting guy and some of the flashbacks ) and I know I didn't miss anything by changing the channel when Morgan Freeman began attacking the stupid worms with his helicopter gunships. The whole thing looked patched-up and rushed. I have not read this book as I am not a fan of Stephen King - "IT" was the only book of his that I finished; generally enjoyable, but with the silliest ending to a book ever printed. SK seems to concentrate on "psychic" ghost stories. And when he tries to introduce science-fiction elements into his horror writing - like this "Dreamcatcher" thing - it seems to fall way short of the Lovecraftian "Cosmic Horror" that he seems to aim for.

I'm a sci-fi fan, but am pretty discriminating. Often _years_ will go by where I don't like even a single sci-fi film that comes out. This one scared and "wow-ed" me. Doesn't just rely on special effects, but has a good plot and at least decent acting. I don't see why this film was rated so poorly, unless other viewers didn't know ahead of time it had a strong sci-fi bent (I didn't). Great storyline, eerie memorable scenes, and a complex background story that evolves slowly but consistently throughout the movie through flashbacks from the main characters. Great way to condense the novel, I assume.

This is truly the worst film I have ever seen. A promising start, in which the four main protagonists are shown to have meta-physical powers of perception, sets the movie up to be a light but enjoyable Sixth Sense-style supernatural thriller. The locations are also very well selected, with the snowy log cabin in keeping with the kind of isolated Americana familiar from Misery.

Unfortunately that is where the positives end. The rest of the film is an absolutely dreadful cocktail of over-acting, hackneyed plot-lines, a terrible script and woeful action scenes. It is hard to decide which is worse, the nauseating flashback scenes to our four heroes as children, the awful lines like "I want to kick some ass" and "let's lock and load" that populate the action scenes, or the bizarre fight between two monsters that arrives with absolutely no explanation at the film's "finale".

The whole experience is like death by a thousand cliches, the pain not alleviated by some token gestures to post-modernity. The killer alien infection that supplies the film's basic narrative is known as Ripley "after that broad in the Alien movies" - incidentally, Morgan Freeman should never, ever be asked to say the word "broad" again.) The unkindest cut of all is the presence of such a strong cast, and particularly Morgan Freeman, in what was so self-evidently a doomed cinematic endeavour. I'm not a great Stephen King fan but Freeman's name on the billboard is enough to make me watch a movie. Never again - his personal brand is tainted. Perhaps he is a victim of Lawrence Kasdan's butchery in the cutting room, but I doubt it. If this script had landed on his doormat with a plateful of roast potatoes and carrots it couldn't have smelt any more like a turkey.

I have heard it said that it is difficult to fit the complexities of King's dense prose into a two hour feature film, and that may well be true. But there is a solution - don't bother. Leave it on the page where the story is better served. Avoid like the plague.

Rating: * out of ****

Those who know me realize I'm a pretty lenient guy when it comes to movies. And I have to be since I'm such a huge fan of horror, a genre renowned for spitting out crap at an alarmingly disproportional rate compared to its quality films. So being the easy guy that I am to please, I feel I should at least briefly mention what I liked about Dreamcatcher, namely that it boasts a first-rate cast and almost easily the best production values of any Stephen King adaptation and...well, that's about it.

Yet another addition to the pile of failed Stephen King adaptations, Dreamcatcher is little more than a mish-mash of almost every conceivable plot King has written since the beginning of his prolific career. An opening sequence gives us separate introductions to each of four best friends (played by Tom Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, and Timothy Olyphant), who all display somewhat varying levels of psychic abilities. Anyway, these four go on a hunting troop in the woods, but a couple of mishaps split them into groups of two and each pair must deal with a fairly immediate crisis.

To make matters worse, the animals in the vicinity all seem to be retreating from a perceived threat and the area is put under quarantine with the arrival of a black ops team (led by Morgan Freeman), whose specialty is (I kid you not) exterminating extraterrestrials that pose a threat to the survival of the human race. Freeman's second in command is played by Tom Sizemore, and it won't take a genius to guess the two will tussle over the way the situation should be handled. Meanwhile, the four pals have to deal with slithery aliens that can apparently shapeshift into more traditional grayish, bipedal E.T.'s (except way taller) and also turn into red dust that's capable of possessing a human body.

I'll start my critique off by stating who should not be blamed for the disaster the film turned out to be, and that's virtually the entire cast. With the exception of Donnie Wahlberg, this highly-talented ensemble does a more than passable job of mustering solid conviction when they deliver the cheese-dripping dialogue. It's all the more pity the film is as terrible as it is; this cast is arguably the best assembled for a Stephen King adaptation since The Shawshank Redemption.

I also liked the cinematography, which captured the beauty of the snow-covered landscape, even doing a fine job of developing a quietly sinister atmosphere in the film's early moments, and that's something most genre movies can't seem to accomplish these days. Some of the visual effects are also initially interesting to behold, though they grow more unconvincing as the film progresses.

But that's virtually the extent of everything I liked about Dreamcatcher. If I had to peg someone specifically for the crap this movie turned out to be, it'd have to be Stephen King, because the source novel itself is poorly written sci-fi nonsense. Chief among the poor writing is the "in-joke," nostalgic dialogue between the four friends that's obviously amusing to them, but is stale and silly to my ears. Perfect example? "Scooby-Dooby Doo, we've got work to do." The story is riddled with contrivances that rely on character stupidity, one such instance occurring early in the film which shows a compulsive toothpick-biter who's sitting on a toilet lid to keep an alien from getting out, but he actually risks getting off the seat just to reach for a toothpick on the floor; sorry, but that's the kind of "characters acting in stupid ways to advance the plot" b.s. I just can't buy.

The film boasts a number of baffling plot holes: why do only two men go in search of a renegade alien when the entire military is at their disposal (heck, it's only the entire world at stake)? How is Mr. Grey is able to turn back and forth from the alien shape to Jonesy without tearing any of his clothes? And why doesn't Jonesy just turn into his powerful Mr. Grey form to break down that door and remove the manhole rather than going through the trouble of it in his much weaker human form? The movie also frustratingly fails to establish what the alien creatures are fully capable of. Early scenes indicate they're shapeshifters, able to vacillate back-and-forth between their serpent forms, bipedal body structure, and that red dust, but none of this is explored to a satisfactory fashion. I'm also not sure why all the aliens didn't just use the red dust method to possess the humans in the surrounding area.

It's hard to say what director Lawrence Kasdan was aiming for. The early scenes indicate a more subtle, atmospheric approach, but that's out the window less than an hour in. Maybe that's just as well, I can't stand psychic links anyway, and couldn't bear to see a 136-minute movie devoted to this lazy plot device. To my chagrin, it still manages to figure into the last half-hour as a pretty lousy way of advancing the story.

As a gory slime-fest with hostile alien creatures, the movie's almost a total bore, the story switching back-and-forth between different characters and never developing momentum for any of these individual plot strands, not even when they eventually converge. You might also be a little miffed by the lack of man vs. monster action, these aliens prefer a sneakier approach to taking over the world.

If anything, Dreamcatcher is a good reminder that creature flicks work best when they maintain a stark simplicity rather than veering off on more "ambitious" tangents like this movie attempts. There are number of wonderful monster movies set in secluded locations, films like Pitch Black, Deep Rising, and John Carpenter's The Thing. I highly suggest you check all of those out instead.