Dreamcatcher is fascinating—I’ll give it that. It deserves some sort of praise, considering how uniquely awful it is. It’s clearly a passion project. No one phones it in and no expense is spared (the movie cost $68 million). When you take the director of The Big Chill, the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and adapt the most popular novelist of the twentieth century, you don’t expect a spectacular failure, but here we are.
Four friends with psychic abilities have gathered for their annual vacation in a secluded cabin. What they don’t know is an alien spacecraft has crash landed nearby. When they come to the aid of a seriously ill man who they find wandering the woods, it’s revealed he’s the host of an alien parasite. Remember the chestburster from Alien? It’s like that, only this one is a, um… assburster. Meanwhile, a secret branch of the military, which apparently deal with these crash landings all the time, are willing to massacre civilians to keep the aliens contained. And if this all sounds a little scatterbrained, let me assure you that it is very scatterbrained.
I finished reading Stephen King’s source material the same day I re-watched the movie. While book fans usually complain about the stuff an adaptation left out, I’m boggled by what they left in. Consider the fact the novel takes around 20 hours to read. A screenwriter should think carefully about how to adapt such a thing to a two-hour format, but William Goldman’s solution involves reducing entire chapters to very brief scenes as if he’d rather water the novel down than alter it.
Director Lawrence Kasdan has admitted the film damaged his career. Directing must be a pretty stressful job as it only takes a single hiccup to jeopardize your future in the business. On top of that, you have to deal with the lame bloggers who rip your hard work apart (ahem). But these things need to be discussed—that’s just integral to the creative arts: the risk of negative criticism. People can’t truly appreciate the high wire act unless there’s a risk of the performer falling.
I’m glad they made Dreamcatcher. I don’t hate it and I’ll probably watch it again someday. It’s actually very entertaining, often for the wrong reasons, and I’ll be the first to admit there’s magic to be found, sprinkled throughout (as with big dumb disaster movies, the early scenes in which the characters have no clue what’s going on are the most compelling). Where else can you see what is essentially a big budget splatter film with aliens and body horror and shades of Stand By Me? I have nothing but praise for the crazy sons of bitches who made it.
One scene that sums up how stupid the movie is takes place in a bathroom. I don’t care how much you set it up—and the movie certainly tries—I will never believe (much less like) a character who gets himself killed so that he can pick up a toothpick from the bathroom floor and stick it in his mouth. Or how ’bout the part when a character is skiing very slowly and falls for no apparent reason? Or when Morgan Freeman’s character, Colonel Curtis, sincerely tells Tom Sizemore, “Okay, you just drove over the Curtis line!” My favorite moment is when one character telepathically answers a pistol like a phone.
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