"Dreamcatcher" is unspeakably bad – and shockingly so – considering that it’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novel.
The story of four longtime friends in rural Maine who communicate telepathically is all over the place. It starts out with glimmers of "Stand By Me" and ends up as a rehash of "Alien." In between, it can’t decide whether it’s an inspirational, supernatural drama or a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thriller, and never fully succeeds at becoming either.
There’s hope in the beginning, though, when we meet the four friends – professor Jonesy (Damian Lewis), psychiatrist Henry (Thomas Jane), car salesman Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and carpenter Beaver (Jason Lee).
When they call each other on the phone, they know who’s on the other end before picking it up, and they sense ahead of time when another member of their group is in potential danger. It’s a gift that was transferred to them as children from a mentally retarded friend named Duddits (played as an adult by Donnie Wahlberg), whom they rescued from a bully attack.
This alone could have been a spooky, intriguing premise for a movie, even though we’ve traveled this psychic territory in King adaptations before.
But then the aliens come.
While the four buddies are on vacation in the woods, a stranger stumbles upon their cabin with red splotches on his face and incessant gastrointestinal rumblings – the result of eating wild berries, he believes.
His condition deteriorates rapidly, and in no time an alien creature bursts from his backside. But that’s just the beginning – the serpent, and others like it, are the minions of aliens who have come to Earth to contaminate the water system.
Soon Col. Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman) is soaring above the landscape in a helicopter trying to rid the woods of the creatures and the red, bubbling fungus they create.
By this point, the ESP has grown conspicuously selective among the four friends. One of the aliens takes over Jonesy’s body and forces him to speak in a broad British accent, and none of his friends perceives this.
As if this weren’t campy enough, Curtis – on the brink of an insanity that’s never really explained – shoots off the finger of a soldier who lies to him, then says cheekily, "I lost my temper."
We can only hope that the humor is intended, though, because everything else about "Dreamcatcher" seems so haphazard.