hyped garbage

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I think the most obvious reason I wanted to watch it was because of the good cast list, but I also hoped it would be worthwhile enough, despite low ratings by critics, based on the book by Stephen King, directed by Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist, Wyatt Earp). Basically four childhood friends: Professor Gary "Jonesy" Jones (Damian Lewis), Joe "Beaver" Clarendon (Jason Lee), Pete Moore (Timothy Olyphant) and Dr. Henry "H" Devlin (Thomas Jane) are on an annual hunting trip in Maine. All four of them share telepathic powers, which they acquired as children, after saving mentally handicapped boy Douglas "Duddits" Cavell (Andrew Robb) from bullies and befriending him. Jonesy is able to make the annual trip, despite being a hit by a car six months ago, has a made a mysterious speedy recovery, at the cabin, Jonesy rescues a man named Rick McCarthy (Eric Keenleyside) from the snow, he was lost in the forest. Jonesy and Beaver allow the man to recover, suddenly a herd of animals are seen fleeing outside, followed by two military helicopters that announce the area is quarantined. Jonesy and Beaver return to the cabin to find a trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom, Rick is sitting semi-catatonic on the toilet, Rick is thrown from it by a worm-like creature that comes out of his bottom. Beaver attempts to trap the creature under the toilet lid, but it breaks out and kills him, Jonesy tries to escape, but is confronted by a larger alien creature called Mr. Gray, who emits a red-dust and possesses Jonesy's body. Meanwhile, Henry and Pete crash their SUV, to avoid hitting a frostbitten woman from Rick's original hunting party, Henry goes for help while Pete stays with the woman, she also dies and excretes a worm, Pete barely manages to kill it. In Jonesy's body, Mr. Gray tricks and kidnaps Pete, but Jonesy warns Henry telepathically to get away, Henry returns to the cabin to find Beaver dead, and the worm laying a group of alien eggs, to kill all the lavae, he grabs lighter fluid and sets the cabin on fire. Meanwhile an elite military unit, led by the slightly unhinged Colonel Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman), specialising in extraterrestrials, are trying to contain the alien exposure, Curtis plans to retire after this operation, and pass command to second in command and his trusted friend Captain Owen Underhill (Tom Sizemore). Curtis and Underhill lead an airstrike into a large forest where the alien spaceship have crash-landed, the aliens using telepathy ask for mercy, but most of the aliens are massacred with mini-guns and missiles, the alien ship self-destructs, destroying the remaining aliens and the two helicopters. Pete is killed by Mr. Gray when he tries to coerce him into cooperating, Jonesy realises the alien possessed his body to gain access to his memories, specifically about Duddits. Henry finds the concentration camp, he realises that all human casualties in quarantine are to be killed, he convinces Underhill to prevent this, going to Curtis and getting himself relieved. Henry and Underhill break out of the camp and head to the home of Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg), who is dying of leukaemia, Duddits informs them that Mr. Gray is headed for the Quabbin Reservoir to seed the water with alien larvae. Realising the danger that the planet is in, Curtis leaves the camp in his armed helicopter and tracks down Henry, Underhill, and Duddits, at the reservoir, he shoots Underhill down, he is mortally wounded and dies shortly afterwards. In the reservoir's pump house, Henry uses Underhill's machine gun to kill Mr. Gray's worm, but he cannot decide if Jonesy is possessed, but Mr. Gray exits his body when confronted by Duddits, who is himself an alien from a different race. Both aliens struggle, finally exploding in a cloud of red-dust which briefly resembles a dreamcatcher, now himself again, Jonesy steps on the final alien larva before it can escape and contaminate the reservoir. Also starring Mikey Holekamp as Young Henry, Reece Thompson as Young Beaver, Giacomo Baessato as Young Jonesy, Joel Palmer as Young Pete, Rosemary Dunsmore as Roberta Cavell and Michael O'Neill as General Matheson. Despite having good talent and names in the cast, and good source material of course, unfortunately what is brought to screen is not very well done, the CGI special effects are very average, and the atmosphere is not very effective, there are memorable moments, but not all for the right reasons, a silly but sort of watchable science-fiction horror. Okay!

I only watched it because I'd just read the book and wanted to see how the film told the story. Such a lot of the best bits of the story missing. and the ridiculous finale is not in the book at all. The acting is mostly incredibly clunky (read - lousy), even Damian. I think the only reason Mr Gray had the posh English accent is because Damian went to Eton, and could put it on. I could go on. But you've been warned.

Bizarre!! A man poops out an alien. Yep, you read that correctly. That is not the end of the madness. The dialogue is so strange and so is the direction. It is just a weird film. It is enjoyable though and it looked and sounded really nice. It is even a bit scary in some places. It reminded me of Slither (2006) but less funny and more odd. Strangeness is afoot.

Having read the source material by Stephen King I really enjoyed Dreamcatcher, with well developed characters who I cared for, and a story that was coherent, made sense and (baring in mind it's primarily Sci-Fi) was fairly believable. The film however lacked all of this.I'll start with what I liked about the film. The casting was generally good, all of the characters largely looked how I had imagined them on the page and they appear to give their best efforts at a poorly written screenplay. It is also shot quite nicely, however if you have to resort to commenting on how good the film looks, there is clearly something lacking from what is most important about a film, which is to my mind story and character. Unfortunately that is about all that I can say that's good about Dreamcatcher and the bad points far outweigh the good.The story writing and dialogue is sloppy, which may not be the director or the screenwriters fault as the book is quite content heavy. The characters are introduced very quickly and as a viewer you learn nothing of real consequence about them, which leads to me as a viewer lacking an emotional connection to them. With the exception of Jonesy the friends are meant to be introduced as being unhappy with their lives, particularly Beaver, who is only happy once reunited with his friends for their annual hunting trip, which (among other things) gives his death more emotional weight. Pete is meant to have a serious drink problem that he desperately tries to hide from his friends without success. Henry is very depressed, and like Pete tries to hide this, but also like Pete without success. None of this is covered in any detail in the film, it is briefly pointed out and then forgotten.The motivation of Owen and Curtis are really poorly done. Owen agrees to help Henry despite having not shown a great deal of resistance to the atrocities he is being ordered to commit beforehand, and having spoken to Henry for just a minute agrees to help him escape. In the book, Curtis is consistently proving himself to be mad and interested only in self preservation, his character is given a lot more time to earn his furious chase after Owen, rather than Freeman's portrayal of Curtis, who appears to have no motivation.The need to make Mr.Grey speak in a posh English accent and be constantly happy and polite was stupid as well. Mr.Grey is meant to be a character whose emotional capabilities are limited to either, extremely calm and in control or overwhelmingly frustrated and angry, slowly gaining the full range of human emotion the longer he spends inhabiting Jonsey's body. The flash backs also fail to give enough back story to make us appreciate the strength of the five kids friendship. The writing for the kids in particular is really bad, which I guess at least matches the poor acting ability of said kid actors.Overall while Dreamcatcher is not in anyway offensive, and is a perfectly tolerable, it is boring and incoherent. It lacks any kind of depth in the writing department, which granted, may have been due to the mass of content available to the creators, and makes me wonder is perhaps Dreamcatcher wouldn't be more suited to being a TV miniseries. However with the cast and source material available Dreamcatcher should have been a great deal better than it was, a very underwhelming adaptation.