Dreamcatcher (2003)
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Four childhood friends reunite for a hunting trip in the Maine woods, bound by a psychic force born from a childhood friend's dreamcatcher. They find themselves caught in a grotesque alien invasion that twists memory, sanity and reality into something far more sinister.
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Their not-too-well visitor ups and dies, but not before a giant worm-like creature exits his body a la "Alien" (from a body orifice, rather than bursting from his stomach).
"Dreamcatcher" is mildly entertaining for a while; think "Stand by Me" meets "Alien," with a soupçon of "Starship Troopers" tossed in.
If you've seen any of the "Alien" movies, as King clearly has, you don't have to be told what's coming next.
The creatures (aptly dubbed “shit weasels”) feed off their human hosts from the inside out, using one’s backdoor as an entrance and exit; the film’s acute sense of the terror derived from penetration and expulsion—farting is used as ominous foreshadowing—is reminiscent of Alien.
A plot element lifted from "Alien" -- extraterrestrial invaders using humans to incubate their wormlike larvae -- jumps straight into a "Dumb and Dumber" gambit: Two guys find one of the worms in a toilet and try to keep it captive by sitting on the john.
In opposition to this lot is Col. Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman), who, in a blend of Men in Black, Outbreak, and X- Files, has been secretly chasing aliens with his secret team of soldiers for 25 years, and whose solution to the residue they leave on human beings, a red stain nicknamed Ripley (after Alien), is to destroy all the residents of any given community whom the aliens have visited and "infected."
Then again, King’s novel was never more than a hodgepodge of Alienisms, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the author’s own The Tommyknockers and The Stand.
Borrowing from John Carpenter’s variation of “The Thing”, four men go up to a cabin in the woods to meet after years of separation and must take on an alien entity that can possess bodies; and borrowing from “Invasion of the body snatchers”, many people are getting overtaken by an alien that uses spores to enter one’s body and take over them.
Unfortunately, the conversion from the printed page to the big screen has made many of the story's already sketchy elements even more sketchy, and the film is derivative of such gory alien-possession movies as "The Thing."
Perhaps the main problem lies in the fact it is too derivative--of other alien movies ( Independence Day meets Alien meets The Thing ) and worse, of other Stephen King movies ( Stand By Me meets It meets The Tommyknockers).
The Monster"), but it also filches ideas from the movies Alien (1979), the John Carpenter remake of The Thing (1982), Dr. Strangelove (1964), The Hidden (1987), and even the overheated plague picture Outbreak (1995).
While watching this messy and overlong effort, viewers are apt to be reminded of "Men in Black," "The Thing," the "Alien" films, "Tremors," "Outbreak," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The X-Files" and even King's "Stand By Me."
What follows is a macabre variation on the Steve Martin-Lily Tomlin comedy "All of Me," as the body runs around butchering people while the brain tries to stop it.
Why does an alien fern capable of shape-shifting and possessing humans need to resort to shit weasels ( Alien ) and evil fungi (Creepshow) of indeterminate intent?
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The Monster"), but it also filches ideas from the movies Alien (1979), the John Carpenter remake of The Thing (1982), Dr. Strangelove (1964), The Hidden (1987), and even the overheated plague picture Outbreak (1995).
It began quite well, actually, but what Stephen King film doesn’t (except King’s directorial debut “Maximum Overdrive,” which stunk like a dead sewer rat from frame one)?
It's hard to believe esteemed screenwriter William Goldman, who adapted King's Misery to the screen and also wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and The Princess Bride, had a hand in this.
This 2003 nonstarter is made all the worse for our knowing that it not only came originally from the pen of America's most popular and prolific horror-story writer but that it was directed by one of Hollywood's premier filmmakers, Lawrence Kasdan ("Body Heat," "The Big Chill," "Silverado," "Grand Canyon," "The Accidental Tourist"), and the script co-written by one of the screen's best writers, William Goldman ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Stepford Wives," "All the President's Men," "Marathon Man," "The Princess Bride," "Misery").
Judging by director Lawrence Kasdan ("Mumford") and cowriter William Goldman's ("Misery") adaptation, "Dreamcatcher" is kitchen-sink King with a broken garbage disposal.
Sharing writing credit with Kasdan, veteran King adapter William Goldman ("Misery," "Hearts in Atlantis") has been able to transfer that compelling quality to the screen.
Kasdan, who receives co-writing credit with legendary scripter William Goldman (All The President’s Men, The Princess Bride , Misery) trips up in so many ways that it's hard to get a singular handle on what went wrong.
As Bill Murray put it in Tootsie (1982), "We're getting into a weird area here."
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This only proves that a King novel on film is best when not translated in such a faithful way (think Kubrick's "The Shining"!).
Four male friends since childhood ("Stand By Me," "It") who share telepathy, dreams ("It," "The Shining") and a heroic retarded friend ("The Stand's" Tom Cullen) deal with contagion and military containment ("The Stand" again) caused by aliens seeking human hosts ("Tommyknockers").
Have the elegant horrors of "The Shining" returned to theaters everywhere?
Four kids stick together like glue in Derry, New Hampshire (Stand By Me), grow up to be adults with their own demons (It), become hindered by snow ( The Shining ) during a hunting trip, and end up face-to-face with a higher supernatural power (The Stand).
So do bits lifted from other movies: "The Shining," "Outbreak," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Tremors" . . . the list goes on, but I started to get writer's cramp trying to keep up.
Adaptations of Stephen King novels are often more Pet Sematary than The Shining - but despite King's convoluted original, what's most dispiriting about this awesomely cack-handed crazy salad, is that seasoned screenwriters like Goldman and Kasdan have come up with such sub-Troma schlock.
Four male friends since childhood ("Stand By Me," "It") who share telepathy, dreams ("It," "The Shining") and a heroic retarded friend ("The Stand's" Tom Cullen) deal with contagion and military containment ("The Stand" again) caused by aliens seeking human hosts ("Tommyknockers").
"Dreamcatcher" is mildly entertaining for a while; think "Stand by Me" meets "Alien," with a soupçon of "Starship Troopers" tossed in.
When the movie switches to a flashback of the fellows as schoolboys 20 years before, there's a whiff of "Stand by Me" in the air.
As in King's Stand By Me and some other stories, there is a cloacal obsession (very white trash), an obsession with toilets, vomiting, involuntary emissions, and odors.
A flashback resembling Stand By Me (but with worse child acting) tells us how they got their powers: back in grade school they saved a retarded boy, Duddits, from a bully.