Friday, September 16, 2011

Movies That Suck/Stephen King Cinema: Dreamcatcher (2003)

Although I saw some TV spots for it when it was released, the first time I became aware of Dreamcatcher was, oddly, a poster in the classroom of my 12th grade Spanish teacher. I knew what a dreamcatcher was but I didn't get what the cover, a woman sitting in the middle of a snow-covered road, meant exactly but it did seem interesting. The cast looked very promising. You had Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore and over the years, I became familiar with and grew to like Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, and Timothy Olyphant. So cast-wise, this movie had a lot going for it. I didn't see the movie until I was twenty in 2007 and I found it at Wal-Mart for $5. I figured, "What the heck" and picked it up. After I watched it, I was... stunned to say the least. It's not the absolute worst movie I've ever seen but it's a mess with a lot of wasted potential.

Four lifelong friends, Henry, Jonesy, Beaver, and Pete, have shared a bond along with a mentally-challenged kid named Douglas "Duddits" Cavell that they saved from some cruel bullies when they were kids and who eventually gave them each a strange, unique power. One day, Jonesy sees a vision of Duddits on the other side of a street and when he tries to cross over to him, he's hit by a car. Six months later, the four friends are on their annual hunting trip in Maine at a cabin they call, "Hole in the Wall." Jonesy, who's recovered from the crash but whose legs are still a little weak, admits to everyone that he's been thinking a lot about Duddits lately and the others admit the same. One day when Henry and Pete are in town, Jonesy and Beaver encounter a lost man while out hunting. The man, who's apparently ill with bad belching and flatulence as well as a strange red rash on his face, goes to rest in their cabin. After witnessing weird events like all types of forest animals running from something and the military quarantining the area, Jonesy and Beaver find the man dead in the bathroom, killed by a hideous creature that erupted from his anus. Beaver is eventually killed by the monster as well and while trying to keep it trapped in the bathroom, Jonesy encounters a tall alien who possesses him. At the same time, Henry and Pete crash their van after nearly hitting a frost-bitten woman sitting in the middle of the road. Henry tells Pete to stay with the woman and as he tries to head back to the cabin, his bond with Jonesy lets him know that something very sinister is afoot, prompting him to take action to save Jonesy and the entire world for that matter.

Is that not the longest plot-description I've ever written or what? The fact that I had to go into so much detail just so you could get the basic gist of what's going on shows you how this movie is. It's all over the place. Anybody who's ever seen it will say that it starts out very promising. The beginning with the four friends spending a hunting trip together and reminiscing about how their lives were changed when they were kids makes you believe that this is going to be like Stand By Me, only with a sci-fi/horror twist. The four actors work very well off together, as well as their child counterparts in the flashbacks, and you're thinking, "Why does nobody talk about this movie? This is awesome!" Then the real plot starts and the movie quickly becomes an incoherent mess. Two of the friends are quickly killed off, an insane subplot involving a military group trying to kill the aliens comes in, and an even more insane subplot involving the lead alien's attempts to use Jonesy's body to achieve world domination also comes into play. I don't think I've ever seen a movie start out with a such great initial premise and then shoot itself in the foot as badly as this one does.

Like I said, the acting is not this movie's problem because it has some really top-notch talent here. Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee, and Damian Lewis all play off each other very well and you really do believe that they're lifelong friends. Lewis is very likable as Jonesy, who has the cool gimmick of what he calls "The Memory Warehouse", where his brain is depicted as an enormous storage area for all his ideas and knowledge. When he becomes possessed by the lead alien, Mr. Gray, he stays in the warehouse and often looks out the window from a safe spot to see what's going (it makes more sense if you've seen the movie). Thomas Jane plays a nice, laid back character as Henry, who is a psychiatrist and ends up humiliating a fat patient of his and is clearly shaken when he later learns that the guy ate himself to death. He has thought about killing himself a couple of times but never goes through with it, even joking about it at one point that one day he's thinking about killing it quits and the other, he's trying to stay alive. Jane plays his part very well and is quite likable. Jason Lee is also great as Beaver, the "nerdiest" of the four. He's really funny and jokes a lot (his "bitch in a buzzsaw" line when the lost man belches really loud cracks me up) but is also serious when he needs to be. As for Timothy Olyphant as Pete, he's probably the least likable. He drinks a lot and is a bit of a jerk but not out and out loathsome. He does have some funny moments. Finally, Donnie Wahlberg appears in the last quarter of the film as Duddits, who's dying from leukemia. He doesn't have much to do but the makeup job on Wahlberg is really good, to the point where it doesn't even look like him. Unfortunately, as we'll see, Duddits is also the character where the entire film falls apart.

Morgan Freeman shows up about forty minutes into the film as Curtis, the leader of a military unit who's quarantining all the people infected by the aliens and killing the aliens themselves. Curtis has been battling the aliens all his life and it has clearly taken a toll on his sanity. He shoots a soldier in the hand when he realizes he's lying to him and reveals to his subordinate, Owen, that he plans to kill all the people who've been quarantined, not caring whether or not they're actually infected. He claims that it does turn his stomach even though he feels he has to do it but you have to wonder if that's sincere. He also despises the commanding officer of the real military, telling Owen that if that general had been left in command, "you wouldn't have lived to your first jerkoff." When his Owen betrays him to help Henry catch Jonesy, Curtis decides to kill him since he crossed "the Curtis-line." Freeman, being the awesome actor that he is, does do a good job and it's an opportunity for him to play against type but I think his whole subplot wasn't needed in the grand scheme of things. Finally, Tom Sizemore plays Owen, Curtis' subordinate. While Owen does look up to Curtis, he becomes convinced that he's lost his mind when watching how he acts and he's a good enough person to do what's right about it, ultimately sacrificing himself. It's a shame Sizemore's drug addiction ruined his career because he is a really good actor and his performance here proves it.

The film's director is Lawrence Kasdan, who's a rather capable writer, having done work on The Empire Strikes Back as well as Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I haven't seen any of his other movies as director because they honestly don't appeal to me but they are very well admired by many, especially The Big Chill. Since Kasdan had a hand in writing the screenplay for this film, it's easy to immediately blame him for how insane and incomprehensible the film's plot is but from what I hear, the film sticks very closely to the original book. Because of that, I'm more willing to blame Stephen King. Needless to say, King has written a lot of good stories which have made for some terrific movies but here, I think he piled up too much material and should have stuck with a simpler story.

The very core of this movie is flawed beyond belief. Duddits gave these kids some telekinetic powers when they were young and you later find out that it was to prepare them for the arrival of Mr. Gray decades later. First off, they hardly use their powers. Other than Jonesy being able to go inside his mind and Pete having the ability to find something by twirling his finger, the only power they share is being able to hear people's thoughts. Beaver and Henry don't seem to have powers specific to them unlike Pete and Jonesy (and Jonesy's Memory Warehouse I thought was metaphorical but I guess not since he hides from Mr. Gray in there). But what's really insulting is that Beaver and Pete are unable to help in the battle with Mr. Gray because they get killed very early on. Beaver gets killed in a dumb way. He's keeping the creature that came out of that guy's butt in the toilet by sitting on it but drops his toothpicks, which he chews on as a nervous tic. While trying to grab a toothpick, he gets off the toilet, allowing the creature to escape and eventually kill him. Pete is captured by the possessed Jonesy and when he refuses to help, he's slaughtered, so he was completely pointless as well. I don't understand why you would build these characters up so much, establish their friendship with their powers, and then just kill two of them off needlessly.

But even that's not the dumbest part of the plot. Duddits himself is an alien. Pete hints at it early on so it's not entirely out of left-field but when he transforms at the end of the film while battling Mr. Gray, it's still like, "You're really going this route?" Like I said, Duddits knew all this time that Mr. Gray was coming and gave these kids their powers to prepare for him. Despite the fact that two of them get killed, you have to wonder what was Duddits' plan? He's an alien but he comes to Earth, becomes a human child (a mentally-challenged one, no less), gives these guys powers, grows up, gets leukemia, and he himself takes out Mr. Gray. Henry and Jonesy do nothing except respectively provide a vessel for Mr. Gray to possess and get Duddits to the final battle. What was the point of giving these kids powers if he himself was going to fight Mr. Gray? And if he knew all along about Mr. Gray's coming, why didn't he just stop him before he even landed on Earth? Is Duddits a mentally challenged, ill alien as well as a human? In the novel and the original version of the movie, Duddits is telepathic but he's not an alien. Originally, he died before they get to the reservoir and Jonesy ends up killing Mr. Gray. While picking up Duddits and taking him to the reservoir would have still been pointless since he died, it would have made more sense. If Duddits was just a normal human who happened to have telekinesis, it would have been easier to accept that he couldn't just stop Mr. Gray himself. So that crap about him being an alien himself was written into the script so I can't fault King for that but he still killed off Beaver and Pete senselessly. This movie would have been a whole lot better if it had been about four friends with this gift teaming up and battling this alien menace. That's all.

The subplot with Curtis and Owen I feel is completely unnecessary. It feels like it should be a separate movie. Like I said, it's nice to see Morgan Freeman play a villain for a change but he and Sizemore are so superfluous to the overall plot that they're not needed. They're both dead by the end of it and had no part in the final battle with Mr. Gray so they did nothing except eat up screentime and make this movie much longer than it should have been (136 minutes). Owen does give Henry and Duddits the ride to the reservoir but you could have just had Henry find an abandoned car, pick up Duddits, and go on from there. It just makes the plot even more convoluted that it is, which is saying a lot. Also, I'm sure the only reason they got Freeman for this role is because he was the biggest actor they could get and they needed somebody well known to headline the movie, even though he's not the main character by a long shot. It's just a useless subplot that happens to waste really good talent as well.

Now let's talk about the aliens. Let's start with the eel-like creatures that explode out of people's rear ends after a long gestation period. You know what they're called? Shit-weasels. That really is their name. It's appropriate but honestly, how am I supposed to take that seriously? The first time you see one of these things is when it falls out of that lost guy's butt while he's on the toilet. The thing is long, slimy, and brown, which makes it seem as though Beaver just got killed by a big turd with teeth. This is beyond ridiculous. Stephen King tried to say that he had it be tied with the bathroom because the bathroom has so many taboos attached to it and I think he mentioned the shower scene in Psycho but a monster that looks like a turd with teeth coming out of a guy's butt is stupid. I do think King's a good writer but, man, he dropped the ball on that one! Having one of your main characters killed by a shit-weasel doesn't help your credibility at all. It's like the dumb inverse of the chestbursters from the Alien movies. Speaking of which, the bizarre, rash-like infection that appears on the infected is called the Ripley. Do I have to say anything else?

The main aliens are also bizarre. What few times you see them, they usually look like big, buff versions of the gray aliens you always hear about in abduction cases. But that's just a benign image they create to hide their true form, which is basically an enormous version of the shit-weasels except with legs. Do the shit-weasels eventually grow up to look like that and if so, why can they lay eggs as soon as they explode out of someone's butt? All these creatures are completely CGI, which I don't think look that bad but it's still clearly CGI, which always manages to take me out of the movie. But what gets me is Mr. Gray's voice when he speaks through Jonesy. He has a refined, British voice. Huh? Okay, when I think of aliens speaking, the last thing that comes to mind is a voice that sounds like it should be in a Monty Python film! The aliens can create voices to fool people so I guess it is explained but still, why a British voice? Has Mr. Gray been spending the years watching British TV shows whose signals he's picked up from Earth and grown to like them so much that he decides to mimic them? Even when he's trapped Jonesy in the Memory Warehouse and is using his real form he uses that voice. That's just surreal.

I don't even understand the title. What does a dreamcatcher, which is a handmade object that certain Native American cultures believe can catch nightmares, have to do with any of this? There is a dreamcatcher in the film but it has no significance to the story whatsoever. Beaver at one point even says that Duddits is their dreamcatcher, I guess because they drew pictures of some when they were kids, but other than that, it has no significance. When Duddits and Mr. Gray are both destroyed at the end, the mist they evaporate into does become a dreamcatcher briefly but, again, what's the significance? The tagline and the trailer would have you believe that it was important, saying, "Sometimes evil slips through" but as we've seen, this evil was expected. It didn't slip through at all.

Despite its numerous flaws, the music score for this movie is very well done. James Newton Howard is a great composer and he writes a nicely atmospheric score for the movie. The main theme is an eerie, catchy tune that does suit the movie and I like a lot of the background music in the movie as well. The really scary music is well done, even if the visuals don't convey the same type of emotion. Also worth mentioning is the music that plays in the opening when the friends are calling each other and they all have weird feelings that are disturbing them. Even if the movie itself isn't very good, I would gladly listen to the score any time because it's awesome.

Dreamcatcher is THE definition of an epic failure of a movie. It starts off well enough but quickly becomes an incoherent, schizophrenic mess of a narrative with characters who are killed off too soon, useless subplots, insanely dumb aspects, and a story whose very core is horribly flawed. It was doomed from the start because some of the stuff King wrote was bad but it was crapped on even further when worse details were added into the script. The fact that there are so many great actors in it makes it even more of a waste. If it had been rewritten and had been about these four friends coming together and using their powers to battle the aliens, it would have been so much better. As it stands, the movie bombed big time and Lawrence Kasdan, so far, hasn't directed another movie since. While I don't out and out hate this movie, I put it in the Movies That Suck category because of all the wasted potential. It's just a shame.

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