DREAMCATCHER is the most recent in a long line of terrible Stephen King novel adaptations. Usually, this would mean that Stephen King himself had a hand in the film. However, he had nothing to do with this bomb, so I did expect a lot more, considering that it was directed by Lawrence Kasdan (THE BIG CHILL and SILVERADO) and written by William Goldman, who gave us BUTCH CASSIDY, ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN, and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. The script consists almost entirely of inane, expository dialogue leading us from one painfully absurd situation to the next. The situations and set-ups are so absurd, in fact, that the parts that are supposed to be terrifying and thrilling are simply asinine. That alone would be bad enough, but there are several other ridiculous events going on simultaneously at any given time in the film. I guess Kasdan thought if he continuously jumped around among several sequences, no one would be able to stop and realize how bad the movie is. WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD! I haven't read the book, but what gets me is that the story in the movie has nothing to do with a dreamcatcher, the Indian device that hangs over a sleeper and "catchers" bad dreams. It has nothing to do with the supernatural, but rather, is about an alien invasion that follows no line of logic. If these aliens have been around for 20+ years, according to the colonel, played by Morgan Freeman, and it only takes one little vermiform creature to contaminate a city's water supply to start the destruction of mankind, then how inept must these aliens be to have failed in this simple task in that amount of time? And what did the main characters have to do with all of this, aside from befriending Duddits? What is Duddits and was his only purpose in life to kill Mr. Grey, a giant alien worm at the very moment he's about to destroy the world? Maybe the book expands on all of this, but the movie certainly does not.
Review of Dreamcatcher
