Dreamcatcher (Widescreen Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Only for Sci-Fi Geeks
Review: If your really into science fiction and you watch the whole movie you will love it. The reason I say that is I almost turned the TV off during one part that was really stupid but I kept watching the whole thing and I loved it at the end. I can understand someone not liking it though, but if your into sci-fi you'd should give it a chance.

Rating:
Summary: Don't , just don't....
Review: This is a horror movie about poop. Yes, there are aliens and government conspiracies, but all the tension and horror in this movie revolves around the human digestional tract, bad gas, and the toilet. Still interested?

The only kudos I will concede to this movie are: 1. I do like how Jonsey's mental warehouse was filmed. It did justice to the discription in the book. and 2. Yes, Duddits is played by ex-New Kid On The Block, Donnie Wahlberg. Considering how horrible his musical skills were, his acting is great.

If you are still going to buy this DVD, check out the bonus feature that has an outtake of Owen, Duddits, and Henry in the car. It is almost hilarious enough to make the purchase worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: IMPRESSIVE EFFECTS, ROILING SCRIPT
Review: I am convinced that buried deep in the perpetual snowstorm of this film is a perfectly logical plot struggling to come out. Problem is it never does.

We set off with such pizzazz, part horror part stunning scifi, that I buckled up to disagree with practically all the reviews on this site.

But the last forty five minutes provide conclusive proof of its mediocrity. Fantastical elements are smooshed in by the minute: ESP, schizophrenia, possession and the inner reaches of the human mind, you name it.

The vicious form-acquiring alien in our case is a slimy half-eel with a centipede for a dentist. It consumes the insides of its victims and then slides out his/her bottom, a process that the film depicts unflinchingly. We provide the flinches.

All this goes on onerously for as long as your drowsy eyes can endure. I am not sure -- and frankly couldn't care lesser -- how this is supposed to hearken back to Stephen King's novels, but it fees less like a film and more like an assignment you put off indefinitely.

Watchable rental for the effects, but an hour into it, feel free to take phone calls and such.

Rating:
Summary: What a vile mess!
Review: I was warned by many to avoid this film. I even saw this movie given 1 star in a local newspaper that is forgiving in its rating system. I was intrigued to see just how bad this movie is. Now I can relate with all who have seen this pathetic excuse for a movie. The acting is horrible! Jason Lee sounds embarrassed to be spouting his horrible dialogue, Tom Sizemore is just glad his role is a supporting character who dies before the end of the story, and Morgan Freeman is simply desperate for any role to take on such putrid filth. Then there are the child actors who were cast because they look right for their parts regardless of the fact none of them can act at all. This story is a supernatural-sci-fi-horror yarn about an alien invasion by worm-like creatures that gestate in the bowels of animals until it is time for them to lay eggs. The scenario involves tainting the Boston water supply with alien parasites. Okay, fine. The alien craft that is shown at one point is huge and obviously technically superior to anything we measly humans could create so why hasn't the invasion succeeded? Why not just crash a parasite-laden alien ship into Lake Michigan and begin with Chicago instead? I suppose Boston is closer to Stephen King's home in Maine so the story should be close by. The plot is plainly stupid. I cannot believe the once great Lawrence Kasdan was at all involved in this film, let alone responsible for the screenplay, production, and direction. With this chaotic, confusing, ridiculous movie his career has definitiely turned a corner...and straight into oncoming traffic! Avoid this film.

Rating:
Summary: So this Alien and four Hunters go into a Bar...
Review: (NOTE: I highly recommend preparing yourself for "Dreamcatchers" by eating a hardy Mexican dinner of bean burritos and perhaps some chili relleno before watching the film. It will heighten your viewing experience.)

Watching once-talented director Lawrence Kasdan's film adaptation of Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher" is like giving yourself a lobotomy. When the closing credits for "Dreamcatcher" rolled, I had three initial thoughts:

1) Morgan Freeman must *really* have owed Kasdan a favor;
2) "Dreamcatcher" is definitely *not* a chick flick;
3) I actually lost IQ points while watching "Dreamcatcher";

And that, for me, explains its perverse appeal---it's a kind of of manifestation of twisted alien evil genius. This movie may actually be Evil.

So here's my advice: go grab this ugly abomination of a thing, plop it in the ol' hopper, watch the first 35 minutes, and then you're all done. If you rented it, take it back. If you bought it, burn it.

But let's talk about "Dreamcatcher", which is based on Stephen King's novel (which, when I read it, seemed to positively scream out for a movie adaptation). I feel comfortable saying this: the movie is better than the book.

The Plot, very quickly: four old friends get together at a remote cabin in the Maine backwoods for their annual reunion, basically to hunt, drink, get bleary-eyed from drinking, and tell fart jokes. They are: a used-car salesman, a suicidal psychiatrist, a college professor, and a novelist. They all share a deep-dark secret, something to do with the---ah---severely intellectually challenged Duddits(played by Donnie Wahlberg in a method acting appearance).

It's not that deep or dark of a secret, and frankly it's really not all that interesting. Trust me, you won't care. Indeed, it was only when "Dreamcatcher" started to flash back to the friends' youth (all played by horrible, wooden child actors who scream out for instant obliteration) that I began to want to beat something to death with a stick.

Anyway, two of the friends make a beer run into "town", while the other two go hunting in the spooky wintry woods surrounding the cabin.

Jonesy (Damien Lewis) happens across a hunter, who introduces himself as Rick McCarthy (Eric Keenleyside in the role of a lifetime) and claims he's lost from his hunting party. Jonesy leads McCarthy back to the gang's cabin (called "Hole in the Wall", a name which has far deeper resonance as the flick progresses---you'll see). McCarthy is afflicted with reddish, suppurating flesh-wounds, a bloated stomach, and possibly gangrenous flatulence. Oh, and he needs to use the toilet. BAD. Fun ensues.

Indeed, the next 30 minutes of the movie are so horrific, so awful, so hideous, so gory, and so glorious (if you're a sick evil twisted gorehound like me), that they almost excuse whatever nonsense comes afterwards.

Basically: Rick McCarthy is about to serve as a handmaiden for one of the Galaxy's Deep Dark Secrets. I remember, years ago, that Alien 3 ran with the tagline "This time, evil is in the most terrifying place of all." Nope, I'm afraid they didn't get that right---but "Dreamcatcher" nails it right on the money. Evil *is* in the most terrifying place of all: right in the putooshta.

Naturally, this being a flick based on the work of Stephen King, Evil gets out---and boy does it get out. Again, the filming of the sequence where Beaver Clarenden (Jason Lee, who comes and goes) and Jonesy confront King Toilet, is so repugnant, so horrid, so putrid, that I actually watched the infernal thing through my hands. It's so deranged that I feel forced to tip my hat to "Dreamcatcher", and give this scene alone, red in tooth and claw and posterior as it is, two whole stars.

But that's as good as it gets. "Dreamcatcher" could have been a contender. It has top-drawer acting talent topped off with some competent unknowns. It has Kasdan at the helm. It goes off material by horror grandmaster King. It has monsters whose method of entry into the world alone makes you cringe. And that isolated cabin and those spooky woods---ah, what could have been.

Anyway, the rest of the movie is a pretty conventional by-the-numbers alien infestation/contamination/military quarantine movie, and the film gets stupider by the second. Just watching the thing after the Last Stand at the OK Toilet scene will cost you brain cells. Tom Sizemore and Morgan Freeman are wasted on stock characters that are so wooden you wonder why Kasdan even bothered writing lines for them. I'm getting bored even writing about it. Just watch the first 35 minutes, quarantine the area, nuke the site from orbit, and *never* talk to strangers---to say nothing of letting them use your bathroom---when you're out alone in the spooky Maine woods.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, Lousy Movie
Review: Stephen King should pass up the money and not let his novels be made into movies. It never works out right. The one decent movie made from one of his books ( The Shining ), he hates.

This movie is great for the brief period of time that it follows the novel. The first act where you are introduced to the characters could not have been done better. The casting is great as well as the initial build up of suspense. The problem is that when the aliens are finally introduced, the movie tries to go over the top with cliched military conspiraccies and surprise twists when a subtle hand is what is needed. The ending is the most rediculous thing I have ever seen.

Don't waste your time or money on this. Check out the book from the library and leave it at that.


Rating:
Summary: A RIOT!
Review: Anyone who has watched "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" may recall a battle scene where the action stopped and the a character voice-over said "Okay, two options: One, dodge the claw and do a spinning back kick! Two, take the claw to the face! When the action resumed the character chose option two and was clawed in the face. However silly it may have been, I found this somewhat amusing because the movie was completely making fun of itself. Obviously, nobody in a real-life situation would have chosen option two, yet in this completely stupid movie, somebody had. You may be wondering why I include "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" a comedy movie, with "Dreamcatcher", a horror movie. You may also be wondering why I gave "Dreamcatcher", which on the surface is one of the most terrible movies ever made, a five star rating. The fact is, "Dreamcatcher" is a comedy movie in disguise. It's a joke, right? The producers could not be serious in making this a horror flick. In it's previews, "Dreamcatcher" had been billed as something like "Scariest film of the new millenium based on a Stephen King novel over 1,275 1/2 pages." In the first 50 minutes or so of the movie, I hadn't been scared a single time. Then came the scene where I realized that the producers must have considered their movie a joke from the beggining and had no idea what genre it belonged in. My guess is that they decided to write different classifications (Action, Sci-fi, Drama, etc.)on individual slips of paper, then select one slip out of a hat. It became apparent me that this movie was an obvious comedy and "horror" was, unfortunately, the slip that had been selected. The scene I am speaking about, is, of course, the sequence where Jason Lee's character hears his friend get killed by the unstoppable sinister alien force in the bathroom. The character then proceeds to wait outside the bathroom door, crying like a little b*tch and waiting until he is sure the alien has killed his friend so he can go back into the bathroom. Why, you might ask, would he do this? Why would he not do something believable in a supposedly serious movie, such as... run...away? I decided that the movie must be a complete joke because no producers could actually think an audience would seriously believe that a person in such a situation would stick around to let the alien kill them. Much like "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" Dreamcatcher is such a silly comedy that it makes fun of itself. Once I began to see the movie for it's true comic entertainment, I saw just how hilarious it really was. If you took "Dreamcatcher" seriously and wrote this movie off as terribly uninspired and unsuspenseful, and I beg you to go back and see just how funny it is when you look at it as a comedy from the outset.

Rating:
Summary: So bad I destroyed my copy.
Review: This movie was so bad I destroyed my copy. The plot was so bad that even the au-some might of Morgan Freedman could not save it.

Rating:
Summary: It's OK
Review: Most of SK's novels are far too detailed for movies, or at least so far they've foiled any director's attempts. This one wasn't really bad, on its own. The alternate (original) ending contained on the CD is better than the one tacked on to the movie, and the one in the book was better than either of them. Read the book.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: I lied ... this movie actually gets zero stars, but this rating system wasn't built for movies as bad as this one, therefore it unofficially gets a 1. In fact, you can't even describe this movie as being bad. It would have to improve by about 800% just to become bad. At no point is this movie even close to being watchable. When I saw this movie, I had slept for 15 hours that day, and was all hyper due to being so well rested. However, it put me to sleep again in about 5 mins. The only reason I woke up was because of a loud farting sound, apparently caused by aliens crawling up people's butts. Then I stayed awake long enough to have the honor of seeing some kid pick up a dog turd. Afterwards, I forced myself back to sleep. Don't watch this movie.