Dreamcatcher (2003)

This film, based on a book by Stephen King is centred on four friends; Jonesy, Beaver, Pete, and Henry. There is something unusual about this quartet; they have a degree of telepathy following an incident in their childhood involving a fifth boy. Now, as adults they are taking part in their annual hunting trip to Maine and things are going to get disturbing. First Jonesy saves a man he finds wandering in the forest; he claims to have become separated from his companions and is ill because he ate some suspicious berries. Meanwhile Henry and Pete crash their car to avoid a woman sitting in the middle of the forest road; they assume she must be frozen to death but it turns out she is still alive. It later emerges that both of them are infected with parasitic alien worms that are soon attacking our four protagonists. The authorities are aware of what is going on and have quarantined the area; they later plan to exterminate everybody present to ensure the aliens don't infect the wider population. If that is to be avoided the survivors from our original foursome will have to use their telepathic powers and find the fifth boy before it is too late.This film contains several good elements but somehow manages to be a bit too messy and not really scary enough. The flashback scenes to the protagonists' childhood felt like very similar to 'Stand by Me'; a superior film also based on a Stephen King Story... the only real difference being that the boys in that film didn't get telepathic powers! The monster was decent enough; I particularly liked how we are introduced to it when one is trapped in a toilet before getting out and killing one of the group. The inclusion of telepaths, aliens and dubious military units felt like an attempt to shoehorn as many ideas into the story as possible; it would have been better with less. The military weren't really needed it would have been better just having our group facing some unexplained monster in the woods than making them obvious aliens that have been known about for some time. Overall I wouldn't say this was terrible; it was clearly trying to do something good but somehow fell a little short. It is still worth checking out if you are a fan of the genre; just don't expect a classic.

Although I didn't know while watching it, the story felt like something out of Stephen Kings mind, yet the way it is presented made me question that theory on many occasions, instead I started to think this movie was a motel-love-child between a Stephen King adaptation and a turd. First the bad: Worst of all is the dialogue that tries really hard to be funny, but never (intentionally) is. Usually because it is flat and/or clichè. None of the characters are really likable and I didn't care about any of them at all, especially if you can spot their incoming deaths from a mile away. There are also quite a few things that are either unexplained or just plain dumb. The beginning of the movie even had me puzzled about what genre I was watching, as there where traces of a thriller, a comedy, a drama and a horror-movie crammed into a few minutes. The creature-design was through and through poor and Im not talking about the quality of 2000s CGI, they were simply boring, uncreative and ugly(not the good kind of ugly, like a facehugger) designed.This movie also appears to like things coming out of butts (turds, farts, blood, alien-lempreys).Now about the good: Everything good I have to say about the movie, is pretty much everything that makes a terrible B-Movie a fun experience. The marks for great trash is that it stays engaging because it keeps things moving and changing, you have cheesy lines from laughable "heroes" with equally laughable conclusions and even a few entertaining fights and deaths, although i think 10-20 minutes less, would have served the movie well.This is a movie where there is a lot you can talk about, it is masterfully trashy without being self-aware. It was a silly entertainment, but a good one if you are in the mood for a campy horror.

This story isn't just about aliens. It's about the power of friendship. It's a theme that runs through many of Stephen King's work....think IT. Of course the book is far better than the story, but this is one of the better renditions of Mr. King's work. I especially liked the scenes filmed at the Quabin Reservoir (someone should write a novel about that. Thousands of people were kicked out of their homes so a reservoir for the people of Boston could be built...but I digress). See Dreamcatcher. It's worth the time.

Dreamcatcher is the story of one nasty alien invasion that's spawning up in the north Maine woods where four friends Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, and Timothy Olyphant have an annual guys get together for a hunting trip. In fact these aliens have tried a few times before and there's an elite military unit headed by Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore that's charged with keeping these large space worms off the planet.Experience has taught Freeman not to do anything by halves. He hears a report they've landed somewhere and he eradicates everything for miles around. That includes humans and the four hunters are in his radius.But as it turns out way back when they were kids they saved a mentally retarded young man from bullies. That random act of kindness proves to be their salvation as the four are given the power of mental telepathy. And the retarded young man played by Donnie Wahlberg as a grown man also proves to be their's and the world's salvation. I guess among other things Stephen King was trying to say you never know when a random act of kindness might pay great dividends. I'm agreeing with another reviewer who says that Dreamcatcher succeeds as drama, horror and even comedy. Check out the scene where two of the guys are trying to contain a worm inside a toilet bowl.Fans of Stephen King should like this film as well as others like me.