Now here’s a movie I had been avoiding for some time. Imp a huge fan of Stephen King but movie or TV adaptations of his books or stories can either be border on absolute genius or the utterly ridiculous. Dreamcatcher seems to be somewhere in between.
I enjoyed Damian Lewis and Donnie Wahlberg in Spielberg’s recent TV epic Band of Brothers and so was keen to see what they both had to offer here. Shamelessly Wahlberg was underused greatly in this picture so don’t expect to see him until very late on. Here he plays Douglas Cavell, or Duddits as he is more affectionately known.
The story revolves around four friends who perform a heroic act and save young Duddits from a group of bullies. And in return Duddits gives them each of them a gift. And they are changed forever. These gifts weren’t unwanted knitted jumpers or socks but special psychic abilities, to read each other’s minds, to see things that others didn’t. Years later the four friends meet up in the Maine woods for a hunting trip.
The trailer and other ads for this film makes the plot almost indecipherable. It really felt the need to promote the Dreamcatcher itself when I didn’t see the need for it to be in the movie at all. It’s just another one of those symbiotic knick-knacks that has too much focus around it.
So I didn’t really know what to expect. But if you really want to know its about an attempted alien invasion. Yeah, Langolierian worm creatures and comical looking aliens are what its all about!
Like most King adaptations the film although weird and uneven at times still holds the viewers attention enough to want to know what the hell is happening. It seems to have that confusing element that always frustrates viewers into just giving up with it half way through. Not me though, I was desperate to know why Damien Lewis’s schizo character had to have the aliens voice with a British accent.
OVERALL SUMMARY
All in all it’s not too bad. If I had to choose a comparison King adaptation it’s probably on par with ‘Needful Things’. The performances are not too shabby, but the Morgan Freeman character was a pointless one. There’s blood, laughs, confusion and utter defiance but there’s a slew of other King movies referenced throughout this movie so have fun spotting them all!
