I had this great idea for a movie today. What if there was this dreamcatcher, see, and evil, ok, evil slipped through it and shenannigans ensued? Wouldn't that be awesome?! And you could call it Dreamcatcher. What? There's already a movie called Dreamcatcher? What's it about? An alien with a British accent that makes other aliens come out of your butt? Oh.
When four escaped characters from Stand By Me are given telepathic powers by a mentally ill friend named Duddits, who may or may not be an alien, it creates a bond of friendship that would last through adulthood. But none of this prepared them for the alien invasion that would present itself during a weekend of mountain binge drinking. When one of the fabulous four becomes possessed by the alien leader, our remaining heroes must stop him before he spreads the alien virus around the world. In addition, a top-secret anti-alien division of the US military is divided over whether or not to simply destroy all of the citizens that may or may not already be infected. Gosh gee, will the day be saved... by someone?
There are a few elements to this film that deserve praise and then prepeare yourself for a serious trashing. The acting is generally decent, despite the fact that none of the characters are very well-written. Damian Lewis carries the film on his back as Jonesey, the character whose mind fights to stay alive inside his alien-possessed body. He has to quickly jump back and forth between being a jittery professor and an extra-terrestrial with an inexplicable, but perfect, British accent. Timothy Olyphant is also decent as the alcoholic friend, Pete. The other performance worth mentioning is Andrew Robb's subtle young Duddits.
Watching an alien burst from a character's chest is cool, but seeing it come out of someone's butt is just unpleasant. But the special effects are generally up to par. While the big aliens completely lack originality (those same wide-eyed skinny mo-fo's), their worm-like children are pretty ugly. Although a bit of a rip-off from the underwater mutation flick, Leviathan, the alien worms are certainly uncomfortable to consider.
All this obligatory positivism aside, this is one of the most over-written and erratic screeplays to hit the theaters in quite while... Not to mention just a good old fashioned piece of crap. Made up entirely of subplots, and no identifiable mother-plot, Dreamcatcher drags on for a painstaking 134 minutes. There is not one element of this film that doesn't raise questions. Most glaringly, why four characters with telepathic powers don't seem to have any normal sense of human intuition. Maybe it makes me a male chauvinist, but I'm not surprised when a female film character hangs around in dangerous circumstances when she should really run away. That's just the way Hollywood likes it. But when four manly men, each with the ability to read thoughts and sense danger, put themselves in obviously dangerous situations (like, say, a room covered in blood and alien mucus?), then I have to give pause. Why should any of us be surprised when the alien finally attacks?
Also, if they really have these telepathic tools, why hasn't it had any rational effect on their lives? Our lead man, Henry, well played by Thomas Jane, at least became a psychiatrist (although not a very good one). But Pete sells cars for goodness sake and Jonesy is just a simple schoolteacher. Excellent actor Jason Lee is completely wasted on the insignificant Beaver character, who doesn't seem to do anything but chew on toothpicks. How come none of these jerks help solve murders? Why don't they work for the government?
Other things left unexplained include the alien's British accent, as well as the entire military subplot. Sure, if you're going to rip off other alien movies, why not have a military subplot? But still, it's extremely hard to take Morgan Freeman's psychotic colonel character seriously and even harder to buy Tom Sizemore's moralistic subordinate character. All their dialogue comes off as little gay sonnets until the colonel inexplicably tries to punish Sizemore by ridiculously, and to great comic effect, chasing him with a helicopter. Donnie Wahlberg, who many say got the talent but not the looks in the family, makes a welcomed appearance towards the end as the adult Duddits. But is the film trying to suggest the mentally ill are really aliens? Or what? What is the point of this silly silly movie? And lastly, where it may have worked well in Stephen King's book, Jonesy stays alive inside a metaphorical room in his head, which looks like a real room full of files. This is nothing if not distracting and is a perfect example of how there are too many elements trying to cling to the script.
There are some references to biological warfare that are scary only because of the current climate of reality, but this significance is barely touched upon. Dreamcatcher rips off several films, all of which are far superior, the most obvious being The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They all play on a distinctly American fear-theme, I think, that foreigners may look like us at first but basically are savages that come over here to use us to spread their seed and change our way of life.
The worst thing about this flick is how deceptive its title is. "Dreamcatcher" is used only as some vague metaphorical reference and really has nothing to do with the plot, which, as I already pointed out, doesn't seem to exist. Frankly, it's a little bizarre seeing as how dreamcatchers are a fascinating part of Native American mythology. So why not just make a movie about that? D+
