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

Although I do remember seeing some TV spots for Dreamcatcher when it was originally released, those fell out of my head about as soon as I saw them (namely because they initially gave me false hope that it was some sort of follow-up to John Carpenter's The Thing, with the snowy setting and the narration talking about how, "A terrifying force has arrived on Earth," and, "It uses you as its disguise,"). The first time I truly became aware of what it was, oddly enough, was due to a poster on the wall of my 12th grade Spanish teacher's classroom. I knew what a dreamcatcher was, but I didn't get what the poster image, with that woman sitting in the middle of a snow-covered road at night, with the dreamcatcher hanging over her, meant. Still, as you can plainly see, it was a memorable and fairly eerie image, and the cast looked very promising just from the names Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore. They were the only two I knew of at the time but, over the years, I also grew to like Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, and Timothy Olyphant, so the movie had a lot going for it when I finally got around to watching it. That wasn't until late summer of 2007, when I found the DVD at Walmart for just $5. I figured, "What the heck?", and picked it up. And I'll admit, when I first watched it, I liked it. Now, there was a lot more to it that those TV spots and the trailer on the DVD didn't allude to, some of which did leave me... stunned, for lack of a better word, but I liked the actors, the setting, the music, and such, so I was able to look past any issues I did have, at least at first. Also, because I'd had such an awful year and was badly depressed for most of it, I think just about any horror movie that I hadn't seen before was going to do something for me. I even watched Dreamcatcher again several more times afterward and still enjoyed it, as did my aunt when I watched it with her. 

But, as time went on and I started to come out of that awful funk I'd been in, boy, did the cracks in this start to show, and they've only gotten worse. While Dreamcatcher is hardly the absolute worst movie I've ever seen, and I also doubt that it's the worst Stephen King adaptation, it's still a major misfire. What really sucks is that it starts out so well, with an interesting and likable main group of characters, well-played by some good actors, and an intriguing mystery. But around the 30- to 40-minute mark, as the threat is gradually revealed, it goes downhill fast and becomes a jumbled, confusing, nonsensical mess. It's full of ideas and concepts that range from kind of clever and inspired to so convoluted and just plain stupid that you can't believe the filmmakers, or King, for that matter, were being serious. Also, Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore not only come in fairly late, but feel so detached from the rest of the story that it's like they belong in a completely different movie. And at 133 minutes, this thing is so much longer than it needs to be and drags badly at points. Between that, some poorly shot and edited sequences, and awful CGI, you've got the biggest scale misfire we'll be looking at this month by far.

Henry Devlin, Gary Jones aka Jonesy, Pete Moore, and Joe "Beaver" Clarendon are four lifelong friends who grew up in the town of Derry, Maine. They have two things in common: psychic and telepathic powers, and a bond with Douglas Cavell, or "Duddits," a mentally-challenged kid whom they first met when they saved him from some cruel bullies. One night, while leaving his office, Jonesy suddenly walks into the middle of the street and is hit by a car. As the EMTs work on him, he has a vision of Duddits, telling him something in his distorted manner of speaking. Six months later, the four friends are on their annual hunting trip in Maine, staying at a cabin they call "Hole in the Wall." Jonesy, who's mostly recovered from the crash, though his legs are still a little weak, tells Henry that the reason why he walked into the street that night was because he saw a vision of Duddits beckoning him over to the opposite side. The two of them also admit that they've been thinking about him lately, and the others say the same when they tell them. One day, while Henry and Pete are in town, Jonesy and Beaver are out hunting, when Jonesy comes across a man lost in the snowy forest. The man, Rick McCarthy, is apparently ill, belching and farting constantly, and also has a strange red rash on his face, as well as a huge bulge in his chest that eventually moves down to his stomach. Jonesy takes him back to their cabin and, after Beaver gets back, they see all types of animals fleeing the forest, followed by a pair of military helicopters who declare that the area has been quarantined. They then find a blood trail leading to the bathroom and, upon breaking down the door, find Rick dead, killed by a hideous creature that erupted from his anus. Beaver is eventually killed by it as well, and while trying to keep it trapped in the bathroom, Jonesy encounters a tall, gray-skinned alien, which possesses his body. Meanwhile, Henry and Pete crash their SUV after nearly hitting a frost-bitten woman sitting in the middle of the road. Henry tells Pete to stay with her, as he tries to head back to the cabin. But on the way, his bond with Jonesy lets him know that something sinister is happening. Soon, Henry will have to take action to not only save Jonesy but the entire world from a horrific form of invasion.

You know what I realized while was I thinking about this review? Stephen King's promotion for the book of Dreamcatcher was the first time I ever saw the man himself. I knew who he was by that point, obviously, and that he was most well-known for writing horror novels, but I'd never seen him or heard his voice until around the time the book was published, when I saw a promotion for it on a TV screen in Walmart. I vividly remember both King himself appearing onscreen, announcing, "Hi, I'm Stephen King," before going on talk about the book, and that cover you see here, with the deer and the setting of that snowy forest, which was imagery that stuck with me. (I must say, King didn't look at all like what I expected. Over time, I'd formed this image of him that, weirdly, was very much like how John Carpenter looked when he was young: long, black hair and a possible mustache.) And regardless of how it turned out, Dreamcatcher is a significant work in King's life, as it was the book he wrote while he was recuperating from being hit by that car in 1999 (something I did know about around the time I saw that promotion, and which he dramatized in the story), a process that helped him get through the pain and misery he was in. He's also said to have sold the movie rights for just a dollar, and on the DVD special features, there's an interview where he talks about how he wrote the book, what his ideas and inspirations were, and such. That interview was shot right after he'd seen the rough cut of the movie and, at the time, he said it was good. But in the years since, he's admitted that he's soured on the book, that his writing was heavily influenced by the Oxycontin he was on for the pain. Thus, I have a sneaking suspicion he's not too fond of the movie, either.

The film's director, Lawrence Kasdan, is probably best known for having a major hand in writing both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as well as for having written the final screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Bodyguard  While none of his other movies as director have appealed to me personally, many of them are admired by critics and did quite well commercially, including Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado, and The Accidental Tourist. Dreamcatcher, however, is not only his least successful work as director by far, but also one of the most poorly-received he's ever been involved with in any capacity. As per usual with him, Kasdan had a hand in writing the screenplay, co-writing it with legendary screenwriter William Goldman, who wrote films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Stepford Wives, Marathon Man, All the President's Men, A Bridge Too Far, The Princess Bride, and Misery, just to name a few. Both men's careers were deeply impacted by how badly Dreamcatcher did, with Kasdan unable to get various projects off the ground afterward. He wasn't able to direct another movie until 2012, when he did Darling Companion, with Diane Keaton and Kevin Kline (which was also a critical and commercial flop). It was also virtually the last screenplay that Goldman was involved with before his death in 2018, as the 2015 film, Wild Card, was a remake of 1985's Heat and used the very same script he'd written back then.

For the most part, the acting isn't the problem here, as many of the actors feel perfectly cast in these roles. While there's no one full-on protagonist, the closest we get is Gary Jones, or Jonesy (Damian Lewis). A college professor in Boston, he's introduced while dealing with a student who was supposedly caught cheating on his exam. Knowing, thanks to his psychic powers, that the student is from Pittsfield, Maine, as well as that he was actually ill with the flu and missed taking the test altogether, Jonesy, knowing that he desperately doesn't want to be sent back there, decides to give him a break and have him write an essay to make up for it. Significantly, he calls and talks to Henry beforehand about going to see Duddits, whom they've both been thinking about lately. And then, that night, while leaving his office, Jonesy is compelled to walk into the street by a vision of Duddits, leading to his getting hit by a car. While the EMTs work on him, he sees another vision of Duddits, who tells him something that's hard to understand due to his distorted mouth and way of speaking. Six months later, when he joins his three friends at Hole in the Wall in Maine, Jonesy tells Henry about how he's thinking a lot about Duddits again and that he was the reason why he got hit. Though Jonesy wonders why Duddits would want to seemingly put him in harm's way, Henry tells him there may be more to it that they're unaware of. Henry proves to be very correct in this summation, as the guys soon get caught up in the alien invasion, starting when Jonesy brings Rick McCarthy back to their cabin when he finds him lost in the woods. Things gradually build from there, culminating in a "shit-weasel" bursting from Rick's anus and killing Beaver, while Jonesy is confronted and then possessed by an alien: Mr. Gray. 

This gives Lewis the opportunity to play something of a dual role, but it's also one of the things you can't believe they were serious about. When Mr. Gray speaks through Jonesy, it's in a very refined, and chipper, British accent. Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of aliens speaking, the last thing that comes to mind is a voice that sounds like it should be in Monty Python! Even Pete, when he first hears him, says, "You sound like one of those James Bonds!" (As a huge Bond fan, I find that to be something of an insult, but I digress.) Lewis himself has said that he 

was doing his best Malcolm McDowell impression, which also explains why he chews the scenery like nobody's business, both in his performance and facial expressions. It's quite surreal, especially when, as he's searching for Jonesy in the depths of the "Memory Warehouse" (I'll explain later), we see a glimpse of his true monstrous form, but he's still talking in that voice. Speaking of which, the first time we do hear Mr. Gray speak, it's revealed that Jonesy is literally a prisoner in his own body, as they have a back and forth while riding a snowmobile. He tells Jonesy, 

"I'm borrowing you. We're going to take a little journey," and explains away Beaver's death, "Your friend had nothing in his head. I've already found something useful in yours." To that, Jonesy tells him, "Fuck you!", and Mr. Gray exclaims, "I know what that expression means! I've studied the foul language section of your Memory Warehouse. Rather distasteful, I must say." Jonesy follows that up with, "How about this, Mr. Gray? Eat shit and die." That's the first of many such over-the-top bits of dialogue

and exchanges Mr. Gray has throughout the movie, including reciting lines from Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and singing Rock-a-Bye Baby! Now granted, it is explained that these aliens simulate human voices to try to fool people but still, why a flamboyant British voice? Has Mr. Gray been watching British TV shows and movies whose signals he's picked up from Earth, and grown to like them so much that he decided to mimic them?

While trapped by Mr. Gray, Jonesy can do little other than stay in the Memory Warehouse and watch helplessly as he kills others, like Pete and innocent passersby, during the journey he takes him on. He is able to keep Mr. Gray out of some parts of the warehouse and hide certain information from him, specifically everything about Duddits, how he gave them their powers, and first warned them about Mr. Gray's coming long ago, when they were kids. Mr. Gray does pick up that someone told Jonesy of him and continually tries to find out who it was, but when 

he does, he hits upon the notion that Duddits didn't tell Jonesy everything, meaning he can't learn it either. This doesn't deter him from going on with his ultimate plan, to contaminate the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts with shit-weasel larvae in order to contaminate the entire population of Boston, then the whole world. Jonesy, however, is also able to use his psychic connection to Henry to let him know where he's going, and also tells him to get Duddits, who, in turn, is able to pinpoint where they are and tell Henry what Mr. Gray's plan is.

Of the four friends, Jonesy is the only one who seems to be content with his life; the others tend to say the acronym "SSDD," aka, "same shit, different day," to describe the mediocrity of their day-to-day existence. But with Thomas Jane's Henry Devlin, it's more than just mere boredom. Also working in Boston as a psychiatrist, at the very beginning of the movie, he ends up humiliating a seriously obese patient by peering into his head and talking about things he didn't want him to know. After the guy storms out, Henry pulls out a gun and comes close to shooting himself (the sound of the phone ringing when Jonesy calls him stops him, but he accidentally shoots his framed diploma on the wall), something he later admits he's thought about doing before but never goes through with it. He even jokes at one point that, one day, he's thinking about calling it quits, and the other, he's trying to stay alive. He also tells Pete that he recently learned that former patient ate himself to death, which he feels very guilty about. In any case, Henry and Jonesy plan to go see Duddits at the beginning, but then the latter gets hit by the car. When they and their two other friends go to Hole in the Wall six months later, Jonesy tells Henry about how he saw a vision of Duddits that led to him getting hit. Henry, agreeing that it is strange, also assures him, "Maybe there's more to the story we don't get yet." 

Unfortunately, while Jane (who admitted he agreed to be in this movie simply because his mother, who was a big Stephen King fan, told him to) is his usual charismatic, laid back self, most of his screentime during the second half consists of him trying to catch up with everyone else. After he and Pete crash when they swerve to avoid hitting this woman sitting in the middle of the road, Henry decides to head on back to Hole in the Wall on foot. On the way, he senses Jonesy approaching on a snowmobile, but then realizes something's wrong and hides. By the time he

gets back to the cabin, not only is Beaver dead but the place has become almost completely covered by the red alien growth called the Ripley, and the shit-weasel there is now laying eggs. Burning down the cabin to destroy the infestation, he marches back through the snowy woods, trying to find help, when he's picked up by the military unit that's cordoned off the area. He's taken to the quarantine zone, where his psychic powers allow him to learn of the deranged Colonel Curtis' plan to kill everyone there to prevent the infection from spreading further. Also learning that

Curtis' second-in-command, Captain Owen Underhill, doesn't agree with this plan, Henry is able to convince him of his psychic abilities and that he knows what Curtis is plotting. On top of that, he tells him of Jonesy's possession by Mr. Gray and how he's using him to escape the area, intent on some other nefarious plan. The rest of the movie has Henry and Owen,  after the latter warns Curtis' superiors of what he's doing and has him relieved of command, chasing down Jonesy and Mr. Gray. Henry is contacted by

Jonesy along the way (a ridiculous moment where Henry acts like Owen's handgun is a damn phone) and, per his instructions, they pick up Duddits en route, as he's able to more accurately pinpoint where they are and what Mr. Gray plans to do. Although they do catch up with Jonesy at the reservoir, Duddits is the one who finally takes out Mr. Gray.

Timothy Olyphant as Pete Moore is probably the least likable of the four friends, as he drinks a lot and can be a bit of a jerk, but he isn't out and out loathsome, either. Working as a car salesman in Bridgton, Maine, Pete is introduced when he uses his psychic powers to help a woman find her car keys (which, it turns out, she dropped in a puddle in a convenience store parking lot). This specific power, "the Line," concists of him twirling his index finger, generating a path that leads him to what he's looking for. In exchange, he asks to treat her dinner, but even though she agrees to it, his being able to figure out exactly where she lost her keys freaks her out (his coming on like a ton of bricks and calling her by her name, even though she didn't tell him, doesn't help matters either) and she drives away from him as fast as she can. Knowing he lost out, he comments, "Another fuckarow." Though his role in the overall story is fairly small, Pete is memorable, mostly for his dry sarcastic wit and the banter he has with the others. After they first arrive cabin, he and Beaver talk about their sex lives, when Pete suggests he use Viagra, saying it'll make him, "As hard as a Louisville Slugger for twelve hours," adding, "I'm talkin' Yastrzemski. You don't have to need it to love it." He then realizes that Beaver just admitted to picking someone up at Bingo the previous night and remarks, "And I thought my deal was pathetic." When he and Henry are on their way back from town later, and Henry tells him about what happened with his ex-patient, Pete says, "Mind if I don't use that story the next time I'm tryin' to sell a Mustang?" But I think his funniest moments come following their crash. In the immediate aftermath, Henry asks Pete if he's okay and he answers, "No! I broke my leg! Aw, man! My damn leg!" Then, when they make their way back towards the woman who was sitting in the road, Pete says, "I oughta warn ya. When we get up there, I'm gonna strangle this broad." Henry figures she's probably already dead, but Pete says, "I don't care. I'll strangle her anyway." Henry leaves him there to look after her while he hikes back to Hole in the Wall, with Pete telling him, "If we die before you get back, promise you'll tell everybody she wasn't my date."

Not listening to Henry's advice to not go back to the SUV to get the beers they bought, Pete guzzles down one bottle after another at the crash site, while talking to himself in the guise of speaking to the woman (who, unbeknownst to him, has already died from a shit-weasel that burst out of her). After drunkenly talking about his friends' childhood bond with Duddits, and how he gave them their psychic abilities, he gets attacked by the shit weasel, which goes right for his crotch (he was peeing in the snow when it popped out). He's able to drive it off, and when 

"Jonesy" arrives on the scene, Pete quickly senses that something isn't right about him. However, Mr. Gray forces him to point the way to I-95, then takes him along. On the way, Pete tries to talk with Jonesy about Duddits, saying he's been thinking that he was sent to warn them about something, but Jonesy dissuades him from saying anything else, knowing that Mr. Gray is listening. Mr. Gray tries to persuade Pete to say more, but when he refuses, the alien kills him.

My personal favorite of the main group is Jason Lee as Joe Clarendon, aka Beaver. Seeming to be the one who's living the most meaningless existence, as we first see him hanging out at a bar, and all he can talk about with the others is obscure movie trivia and how he got blown recently, he comes off as a tad nerdy with those glasses, and has a nervous tic of needing a toothpick to munch on. In his first appearance, he calls up Jonesy as he's leaving his office, warning him to be careful, though he's not sure of what; right after that is when Jonesy gets hit. Despite his melancholic introduction, Beaver proves to be really funny and jokey, coming up with a lot of interesting turns of phrase like, "Bit my bag," "Fuck me, Freddy!", and, when Rick McCarthy first belches in front of him, "Bitch in a buzzsaw!" He and Pete not only have a nice back and forth, but also seem to have their own personal turns of phrase in "fuckaree" and "fuckarow" when they talk about how well or poorly their sexual conquests have gone. Speaking of which, when Pete questions that he picked up someone from Bingo, Beaver exclaims, "Well, there's trim there!" And the two of them later make a bet, as Beaver claims there is a movie that addresses the not so nice issues of morning breath, needing to pee upon first waking up, and so on, which Pete doesn't believe in. Beaver names the movie as Promised Land, with Meg Ryan and Kiefer Sutherland, which Pete thinks he made up.

Upon meeting Rick McCarthy after Jonesy brings him to the cabin, Beaver is nice and welcoming to him, even complimenting him on his belch. He also helps Jonesy put him to bed, giving him a potential barf bucket and telling him where the bathroom is, adding, "If you go in the first [door], then you'll be takin' a shit in the linen closet." But then, both he and Jonesy have to run to the door some fresh air due to the smell of Rick's burping and flatulence. Jonesy tells him about how the swelling in Rick's chest has moved down to his stomach, and Beaver says, "I wish Henry

were here." Jonesy reminds him that Henry is just a psychiatrist but Beaver counters, "He went to med school! Did you?" Jonesy answers, "I thought about it." Later, Beaver asks Jonesy, "You don't suppose he got exposed to radiation, do you? I saw that once in a movie. Guy ended up bald as Telly what's-his-fuck." Nervous about it, he starts eating peanut butter from the jar, with his fingers, which Jonesy calls him out on. His response? "I'll save some."  After seeing the animals feeling the forest, the two of them spot the

military choppers afterward. Beaver tries to get them to take Rick away so they don't have to deal with him, but becomes frustrated when they refuse to help, then yells, "Kiss my bender!", and flips them off. After that is when they realize just how "sick" Rick really is and, unfortunately, Beaver is the first one of the friends to get killed. Moreover, he dies for a very stupid reason, as I'll get into later.

All four of those actors have great chemistry and play off each other well, to the point where you really do believe they're lifelong friends, particularly in the scene where the four of them are sitting around the table, ribbing each other and reminiscing about their childhood. While they don't get nearly as much screentime, and they're not as amazing as the main group in Stand By Me by a long shot, the same chemistry and likability also applies to the kids who play their younger selves in the flashbacks. What's more, it's very easy to believe that you really are 

seeing these guys when they were kids, not just in looks but attitude. The most memorable is young Beaver (Reece Thompson), who was just as foul-mouthed and obsessed with sex as a kid as he is an adult. In the first flashback, the reason the group comes upon Duddits being tortured by some bullies in the first place is because Beaver drags them to an abandoned building where a pornographic picture is supposedly hanging on the wall. While they're all appalled at the hideous thing the bullies are doing to Duddits, Beaver is so enraged that he actually picks 

up a pair of large rocks and is ready to use it to fight them. And after they've gotten rid of the bullies, Beaver calms Duddits down by softly singing the song Blue Bayou, threatening to disown them as friends if they tell anyone. Because he recognizes who these bullies are, with one being the high school quarterback, Henry (Mikey Holekamp) threatens to expose him and ruin his reputation, while Pete (Joel Palmer), who's said to be a very fast runner, is ready to take off and get some help. Jonesy (Giacomo 

Baessato) is probably the least memorable of the kids but he calls the bullies out on how horrible what it is that they're doing to Duddits. Later, when the kids decide to use Duddits to find a missing twelve-year old, mentally-challenged girl, Jonesy is the one who insists he can do it. This, in turn, leads to Duddits giving them their psychic powers.

Duddits is first mentioned by Jonesy and Henry at the very beginning, then we see some glimpses of him as a kid (Andrew Robb), when Jonesy has his visions of him, and later get a sense of just how much he means to the four friends, before we formally meet him in the first flashback. Initially seeming like just a kid who's mentally challenged, Duddits is rescued by young Jonesy, Beaver, Henry, and Pete from some cruel high school kids who are trying to force him to eat a turd. Horribly shaken and distraught after they manage to get rid of the bullies, he calms down when Beaver sings Blue Bayou to him. He promptly makes friends and bonds with the four of them, and they learn he has a speech impediment that causes him to miss certain letters in words and names. This is how he becomes known as Duddits, despite his name being Douglas. The four of them also get the sense that there's something unusual about him, which is proven in the second flashback when they decide to see if he can locate a missing girl. Believing he can read their minds, they join hands with him and try to project an image of the missing girl into his brain. Instead, he gives them their psychic abilities, and they learn that they can not only now hear each other's thoughts, but Pete has "the Line," which he uses to pinpoint where the girl is. Little do they know that, at that moment, Duddits also sensed that they would, one day, have to save the world from Mr. Gray, which he tells Jonesy in his vision after the car hits him.

Adult Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg) doesn't appear until well into the third act, when there's less than half an hour left. When Henry and Owen Underhill arrive at his home in Derry, where he lives with his mother, Roberta (Rosemary Dunsmore), it turns out that Duddits is dying from leukemia. Despite being very frail and weak, he's ecstatic when Henry shows up, hugging and even kissing him, saying he missed him. What's more, Roberta (the one significant female character in the film), despite knowing that going with Henry will likely mean his death, is willing to 

let him, given how excited he's been, knowing that Henry was coming. She also says that she thinks Duddits will die happy if he's with his friend. After they leave, Duddits is able to tell Henry and Owen where Mr. Gray is and what he wants. And during the climax, Duddits is the one who confronts and defeats Mr. Gray. All in all, while Donnie Wahlberg doesn't have much to do in the long run, his performance does come across as sincere, and the makeup job on him is really good, to the point where it doesn't even look like him. Unfortunately, as we'll see later, Duddits is at the center of the story's biggest misfire..

Despite being top-billed, Morgan Freeman doesn't make his first appearance as Colonel Abraham Curtis until about forty minutes in, doesn't have his first real scene until almost an hour in, and his total screentime adds up to just around forty minutes in total. Still, Freeman, who said he accepted the role because he wanted to work with Lawrence Kasdan, does seem to enjoy himself, likely because this gives him an opportunity to really play against type. The leader of Blue Unit, a military group that's quarantined all the people infected by the aliens and intent on killing the aliens themselves, Curtis has been battling them for 25 years and, as far as he's concerned, he knows the best ways to deal with them. In his first real scene, where he briefs Captain Owen Underhill on how they operate, he figures this incident is a crash landing but that they're going to try for an invasion anyway, as, "I always say they never visited a world they wouldn't rather own." He also has no respect for his superiors, whom he refers to as, "Enlightened cocksuckers who've never been within three states of an ET." This is reinforced when a corporal named Maples is brought before him and Curtis has him say everything there is to know about Blue Unit, including that it's better than the regular army, who are "pussies" in comparison. That discontent on Curtis' part extends to three-star General Matheson, as he tells Owen that, if Matheson had been in command of Blue Unit for the past 25 years, "You wouldn't have lived to your first jerkoff." Significantly, Curtis has decided it's time for him to hang it up and tells Owen, whom he sees not only as his second-in-command but also his trusted friend, that he'll take over for him once this situation has passed. This is symbolized by his giving Owen a pearl-handled, stainless steel .45 handgun, which he claims to have gotten from John Wayne.

However, his experiences have also made it to where Curtis will not compromise whatsoever. During his briefing with Owen, when Maples is brought in, Curtis tells him that if anybody in his unit disobeys him, he will punish them immediately. He then questions him about whether or not he allowed a woman and her daughter to escape the containment zone, and when Maples insists the woman couldn't have been contaminated by the Ripley, Curtis asks him to raise his hand and swear that he knows this for sure. This whole time, Curtis has been loading a clip

into his handgun, and he cocks it after asking him that last question. Maples raises his hand, holding up three fingers, and says, "Scout's honor." Curtis then proceeds to shoot him in the hand, nearly blowing a chunk of it off. As Maples yells in pain, grabbing at his hand, Curtis trains the gun on him, yelling at him to stop blubbering, and tells him, "You just avoided a court martial, boy. You ever lie to me again, you'll be facing a firing squad." He then tells his subordinates to get him out before he decides to kill him anyway. 

Afterward, when Owen makes it clear that he's shocked by what he just did, Curtis reveals that the woman in question was indeed infected, and says that Maples, "Crossed the Curtis line! Came into my house, told me lies." However, he doesn't take offense when Owen admits that he does think Curtis is a little unhinged. Where things go south for their relationship is when, during the third act, Curtis tells Owen that he plans to kill all the people who've been quarantined, not caring that they could potentially recover. He 

insists it's the only way to be sure that the infection doesn't spread any further, and to eliminate the chances of a hitchhiker escaping the zone, i.e. Mr. Gray. Curtis does say that he doesn't take any pleasure in this, as he looks out the window and tells Owen, "Those poor schmucks. They drive Chevrolets, shop at Walmart, never miss an episode of Friends. These are Americans. The idea of slaughtering Americans... well, it just turns my stomach." Turning back to Owen, he adds, "But I'll do it. I'll do it, because it needs to be done."

Interestingly, this latter decision makes Curtis akin to General McClintock in Outbreak, which Morgan Freeman also appeared in. Like Curtis, McClintock ultimately elected to wipe out an entire town to prevent the spread of a deadly virus, even when progress was being made on a serum. However, as horrific as his plan is, Curtis is more honorable than McClintock, as the latter did this mainly to cover up their plans to use an earlier strain of the virus as a biological weapon, whereas Curtis simply feels that the big picture is what they should be worrying about.

That, and because he's out of his mind, as Henry tells Owen. Curtis also does not stand for any sort of betrayal, as Owen does by going over his head and getting the regular military involved, before going off with Henry to help him find Jonesy. Curtis is now determined to kill him, as he crossed the Curtis-line (he even tries to take him out with a sniper scope right then and there). Feigning to General Matheson that he's willing to let him take command so he can retire, Curtis later commandeers an armed helicopter and, 

using a tracker in the gun he gave to Owen, hunts them down, attacking them at the Quabbin Reservoir. All in all, while this can hardly be called one of Freeman's finest moments, like I said, he does seem to be having fun playing a fairly over-the-top villain, rather than the more low key, thoughtful, gravitas roles he's well-known for. (And what is with those eyebrows? I don't think I've ever seen them that bushy.)

It's a shame that Tom Sizemore's drug addiction and personal issues ruined his career, and he was never able to truly recover it before his tragic death in 2023, because he was a great actor, no matter what the movie. He proves this here as Captain Owen Underhill, Curtis' second-in-command and close friend. You can tell from their first scene that they're quite close, and Owen does look up to Curtis, considering it an honor when he allows him to lead the air strike on the aliens. He's also more than ready to take his place as the head of Blue Unit. But it's also clear that he's disturbed by some of Curtis' actions, such as what he does to Corporal Maples, and is horrified when he reveals his plan to wipe out everyone in the quarantine zone. Owen tries to tell him that there are studies which prove a good number of those infected with the Ripley will get over it, but Curtis isn't having it, telling him they should be looking at the bigger picture and preventing its further spread of it. Following that, Owen runs into Henry outside, and after he easily convinces him of his psychic abilities, tells him that a "hitchhiker" has already fled the quarantine zone and he needs his help to find him. It turns out that, according to Henry, Owen was already going to contact General Matheson and have him take charge, but now, he not only does that but also orchestrates it to where the two of them are able to flee the area in a vehicle to find Jonesy. But, even though both they and Duddits make it to the Quabbin Reservoir, Owen isn't able to face down Mr. Gray. Instead, he has to confront Curtis, and they end up killing each other.

Visually, Dreamcatcher is very appealing (for the most part). Again, going back to John Carpenter's The Thing, I've always loved horror movies and thrillers that use the cold and snow as a means of creating isolation, and the visuals here, of the forests in and around Hole in the Wall covered in blankets of pure-white snow, are breathtaking. Not only are the daytime exteriors beautiful, with the constantly falling snow and the layers that are already there giving the woods a mysterious feel that I like (I feel the same

way whenever it snows out where I live), but when it's nighttime during the movie's second half, the place feels as brutally cold and ominous as it is lovely. The exterior scenes at the quarantine zone look especially nice and striking, thanks to the spotlights that illuminate much of the place. The scenes in the vehicles during these latter parts, like when Mr. Gray is using Jonesy's body to get to Massachusetts, and Henry, Owen, and Duddits are following them, have a nicely dark, blue lighting

scheme to them, and I also like the moments where the coldly-lit outside interacts with a dark or warmly lit interior. Speaking of which, the scenes inside the cabin when they arrive there that first night feel warm and comfortable (as do the interiors of Duddits' home during the third act), whereas during the daytime, when things start to go south for the friends, the interiors have a grayer feel to them, getting across the feeling of being inside on a cold, snowy day. This look becomes especially unpleasant-looking and even hideous during the scene in the restroom, after the 

first shit-weasel has exploded out of Rick McCarthy. And the scenes inside Colonel Curtis' command center have a gray, clinical sort of feel to them, whereas the place they house the infected comes off as sickly and uncomfortable, with a deep blue light highlighting the clean spots at both of its entrances.

During the first act, set in both Maine and Boston, there's a sense of it being cloudy, overcast, and rainy. I tend not to like scenes like this because of how gloomy it looks, but it does add to the notion that most of them are satisfied with the directions their lives have taken. Plus, I do genuinely like the look and feel of the bar where Beaver is introduced, as well as the seedy immediate exteriors when he walks out to the phone-booth to call Jonesy, and the more reputable place where Jonesy is when he's leaving his

office, right before he gets hit by the car. The flashbacks to their childhood in Derry have a very warm, bucolic feel, added to by the lovely forests and parks those scenes are set in, as well as the abandoned buildings and railroad tracks we see them hanging around.

For the most part, the film is generally well-made, with Lawrence Kasdan's direction and John Seale's cinematography being very on point. There are a number of really cool images throughout it, such as Henry sitting in front of his office's window, preparing to kill himself at the beginning; the vision of Duddits across the road from Jonesy; the four friends framed in the same shot as the dreamcatcher hanging from the cabin's ceiling (which was on the back of the DVD); high-angle shots of the snowy

woods, including some looking down on the road leading to Hole in the Wall; that woman sitting in the middle of the snowy road; the animals fleeing the forest; the possessed Jonesy flagging down a passing vehicle, which is shot from behind him as the approaching headlights illuminate him; a shot from Owen's POV as he wears a hazmat suit while walking through the building containing those who've been infected; and a vast number of memorable shots from the flashbacks. I also like this moment early on, when Jonesy and Beaver are out hunting, where Kasdan 

lets the movie breathe for a little bit, focusing on some quiet moments like a flake of snow drifting down onto Beaver's glasses and Jonesy smiling upon realizing it's beginning to snow. And when we first see Jonesy talking with Mr. Gray as they're riding a snowmobile following the possession, it just cuts back and forth between two angles on Damian Lewis, as he portrays Jonesy when seen on the left side of the screen and Mr. Gray on the right. It's a simply but effective way of getting that concept across.

One really inspired idea on the filmmakers' part is the visualization of Jonesy's "Memory Warehouse" as a literal mental storage building, with various levels and a spiraling walkway spanning them. Here, his memories are divided into various sections, contained within files, boxes, and numerous shelves, and divided up into different categories. When the concept is first brought up, you see Jonesy sorting and even getting rid of certain memories by burning them, while taking others into an office where he keeps all 

his "secret memories." You even see him look out a window in his mind, back into the real world, as he and his friends continue talking around the table. This place becomes very significant later on, as it's used to visualize how Jonesy is literally a prisoner in his own mind when he's possessed by Mr. Gray. We see him helplessly looking out the window as the alien uses his body to do horrible things, but there are also certain parts of the warehouse that he manages to keep hidden from him. In a scene that's actually kind

of tense, and turns the warehouse into a claustrophobic personal trap, he takes all of his memories about Duddits and rushes them down to a door on the bottom floor, as Mr. Gray's true, monstrous form chases him down there. He just barely manages to get them safely locked away, behind a door marked, "SSDD." Some may find these parts of the movie to be as ridiculous as nearly everything else, but given how abstract and hard to visualize some of Stephen King's concepts often are, I thought this was a really clever way of getting around it.

However, there are some moments where the filmmaking is either a tad ill-advised or eyebrow-raising. The scene where Jonesy and Beaver first see one of the shit-weasels when it erupts out of Rick's anus is often shot at awkward angles and in a shaky manner that makes it more disorienting than suspenseful. In the scene where Colonel Curtis tells Owen of his plan to wipe out everyone in the containment zone, it dissolves from the previous scene to an extreme close-up of a glass as Curtis 

pours some liquor into it, followed by a close side-view of his face as he takes a drink and tells Owen he doesn't care what the studies say, a major close-up of Owen's eyes as they start to argue about it, and one right on Curtis' face, which not only comes off as awkward, especially when we're looking at the side of it before he turns around, but really accentuates how bushy Morgan Freeman's eyebrows are. That sequence of shots feels a tad too arty and pointless to me. As for the editing, it's fine, for the most part, and 

there are also some interesting transitions, including some old-fashioned scene swipes. But, after Henry talks with Owen about Curtis, they try to fool you into thinking Owen is turning him over to the colonel by cutting back and forth to Curtis heading into a shed where Owen says he put Henry, to Henry waiting anxiously for Owen to show up. If you've seen The Silence of the Lambs, though, you know how this is going to go and, sure enough, Curtis enters the shed to find someone else in there, while Owen picks up Henry elsewhere and they flee the 

scene. Finally, the major action scenes, like the attack on the alien ship and the final confrontation between Curtis and Owen at the reservoir, are shot and edited in a choppy and, in the case of the former, often blurry manner that makes it hard to make out exactly what's going on or what you're even looking at.

Dreamcatcher was shot almost entirely in British Columbia, with locations in Prince George and Vancouver, as well as a little bit in Boston. A lot of the locations have that small town/rural feel you often get in King's work, such as Bridgton, Maine, where Pete lives. We don't see much of it, but when he's helping the woman who's lost her car keys, it comes off as fairly quaint and charming, with a little convenience store and a cafe across from that. It's not made clear if Beaver lives in Bridgton as well but, as 

I've said, he's first seen spending time in a seedy-looking bar, in a kind of scummy neighborhood. We also don't see much of the little town near Hole in the Wall, and the only time we see it normally is when Henry and Pete are there, stocking up on supplies at Gosselin's Market, but it comes off as even more remote and tiny. In fact, even though a number of civilians are isolated in the quarantine zone, there seem to be few buildings apart from the market and this large barn next to it. And the market looks very 

old and fragile, as if it could easily fall apart. I've already talked about how lovely and expansive the nearby snow-covered woods are, and Hole in the Wall itself is a modest but very comfortable cabin (it reminds me of some places that my dad and his hunting buddies used to go on their own hunting trips). Thus, it's actually unsettling when these places fall prey to the alien infestation, just as it is when the small town is invaded by Blue Unit, who set up a command center, a place for keeping the infected, 

and use the nearby barns and sheds to store equipment. The interior of Colonel Curtis' command center is the most high-tech place in the movie, with a big, see through map in the center of the room, a wall of video monitors and digital map readouts behind that, a table with a glowing, lit-up surface that Curtis sits at, photos of the operation as it's been progressing on the wall, and lots of research material, etc. It also, as I said, has a cold, clinical feel to it, whereas the building where the infected are kept exudes the feeling of pain and sickness that the people are going through.

The flashbacks to the guys' childhood in Derry make it out to be something of an idyllic, lovely, rural place, with the green springtime scenery, charmingly rustic touches like the railroad tracks, and places like the nice little park we see in the second flashback, and the abandoned Tracker Brothers Trucking and Storage building, where the guys meet Duddits and which we also see the inside of. (Of course, there are also the horrible bullies, but unlike It, there doesn't seem to be the danger of an evil, kid-eating clown, either.) The

only time we see Derry in the main story-line is when Henry and Owen arrive to pick up Duddits at his home. You can't make out much of the town, as it's nighttime and covered in snow, but it looks nice, feeling like a postcard. The inside of Duddits' house comes off as cozy and warm, and when we see his childhood room, it's full of all sorts of Scooby-Doo paraphernalia and still generally looks like a young boy's room. But, on top of that is the shadow of his leukemia, with an IV stand and drip, a heating pad on his bed, and a bedside refrigerator full of medication. 

And the story ends in a place somewhat akin to Hole in the Wall, as in a isolated building in the middle of some snowy woods. In this case, however, it's the installation that allows direct access to the Quabbin Reservoir, where Mr. Gray tries to infect the water supply.

Okay, I think that's positives. Now, let's get to the ass-kicking that this movie deserves. First off, as I said in the introduction, and as anybody who's ever seen it can attest to, Dreamcatcher starts out very promisingly, with a unique and expressionistic opening credits sequence, made up of images of ice, frost, the snowy landscape, the dreamcatcher itself. and even fleeting glimpses of a shit-weasel, melding together. Then, as the first act sets up the four friends and their annual hunting trip, and they reminisce

about how their lives were changed when they were kids, as well as their special friend who, for whatever reason, can't be there, it seems as though this is going to be like Stand By Me but with a sci-fi/horror twist, like if you combined that story with It. Watching the four actors play off each other so well, as well as their childhood counterparts in the flashbacks, you're likely to think to yourself, "Why does nobody talk about this? This is awesome!" And as the first hints of the major threat come in, with Rick McCarthy suddenly

showing up, as something bizarre happens to him, Pete and Henry coming across the woman sitting in the middle of the road, and Jonesy and Beaver seeing the animals fleeing the forest, it remains intriguing (if a bit silly, given Rick and the woman's belching and flatulence). But, it isn't long before the movie becomes an incoherent and often downright frustrating mess: Beaver and Pete are quickly killed off, the subplot with Blue Unit comes out of nowhere and feels very out of place, the nature of the alien invaders is laughable and hard to take seriously when 

you learn of it, and the second half focuses on the possessed Jonesy heading to Massachusetts to infect the Boston water supply, while Henry is reduced to playing catch-up, and Colonel Curtis and Owen merely get caught up in it, as does Duddits.

Let's finally talk about the aliens, starting with the shit-weasels, the eel-like creatures that explode out of people's rear ends after gestating within them, sort of like a nastier version of the Chestbursters. That moniker really is their official name and, while certainly appropriate, how am I supposed to take that seriously? Their actual depiction doesn't help. Signs that a person or animal is infected with is the Ripley, a strange, red rash that appears on either their flesh or fur. (And yeah, speaking of the Alien movies, Curtis

flat-out says it's named after Sigourney Weaver's iconic character.) It seems like you become infected by ingesting it, as Rick tells Jonesy that he ate some berries in the dark, and Mr. Gray later has a dog munch on the infected carcass of a deer, planning to later use the dog to infect Boston's water supply. As Rick's infection progresses, you see the massive swelling in his chest suddenly travel down to his stomach, which becomes severely pooched out, and that's when he starts farting. The first time you

actually see one of the shit-weasels is when, after Jonesy and Beaver burst into the bathroom to find Rick dead on the toilet, it literally drops out of his anus and you hear it splash into the toilet water, as if Rick did actually drop a clinker, as Beaver says. Then, they try to keep it contained within the toilet, with Beaver even trying to flush it, but it's too big to go down into the septic tank. He's then forced to sit on the toilet lid in order to keep the creature in, as it angrily slams against the lid's underside. While

Jonesy goes to try to find some duct tape, Beaver literally tries to keep a lid on it, but the thing finally gets loose because, in his obsessiveness with toothpicks, Beaver leans over to pick up one of many he fumbled onto the floor earlier. It's now able to break out of the toilet and, after a struggle wherein it slices the fingers off his hand, kills Beaver when he tries to restrain it from attacking Jonesy when he finally comes back with the duct tape. 

The shit-weasel itself, as I've said, is eel-like and is also slimy and brown, with a hooked tail, and a mouth that opens up to reveal rows and rows of extremely sharp teeth. In other words, it's as if Beaver got killed by a literal killer turd. In his interview on the DVD, Stephen King said he was trying to tap into the numerous taboos associated with the bathroom, bringing up how that's often where people learn they have cancer or some other disease. That's something that David Cronenberg has talked about before, 

including on his audio commentary for The Fly, but the difference is that Cronenberg's way of visualizing this taboo, not just in that movie but many others, is infinitely most disturbing than King's idea of a monster that looks like a turd with teeth coming out of a guy's butt. (King even said in that interview that the bathroom scene was the driving force behind his writing the book, and went on to say, "It's gonna do for the toilet what Psycho did for the shower.") In any case, the shit-weasels manage to be something of a legitimate threat, not only because of their sharp 

teeth but also their speed, agility, and surprising strength. They eventually lay eggs, and their offspring is what spreads the infection directly to other creatures, but the shit-weasels' presence seems to be enough to spread it to the environment; as when Henry makes it back to the cabin, he finds that the Ripley has almost completely engulfed its interior. Like I said before, that's an eerie, unsettling visage, and there's a big mass of it he finds on the floor that appears to be breathing, which is really creepy.

The main aliens are rather bizarre as well. The first time you see one, which is when Jonesy first sees Mr. Gray before he becomes possessed, it looks like a big, buff version of the classic gray, humanoid aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and that you also often hear about in real-life abduction cases. The skin is translucent, allowing you to see veins and even bones, like Mr. Gray's rib-cage, just beneath the surface. But according to Curtis, that's just a benign image they create to hide their true form. We see

glimpses of their true forms when Mr. Gray is possessing Jonesy, in the scene where Blue Unit wipes out the aliens and their crashed ship, and when Mr. Gray stalks Jonesy in the Memory Warehouse, but it's not until he leaves Jonesy's body at the end to face Duddits that you get a really good look at his true form. It basically looks like an enormous shit-weasel, except with legs and a three-pronged hook on its tail. So, do the shit-weasels eventually grow up to look like that? If so, then why are they able to lay eggs as

soon as they explode out of someone's butt? And why can't an actual shit-weasel infect the water supply, rather than just its offspring? (Yeah, you thought the Xenomorphs' life-cycle was complex.) The aliens, of course, have other abilities, like becoming a red dust resembling the Ripley in order to go into somebody's body and take control, and they can also plant thoughts directly into a person's head, which they do to try to deter Blue Unit from attacking them, claiming that they're weak and defenseless in benign-sounding voices. Finally, as for their motivation for

trying to conquer Earth, the only explanation we get is from Curtis, who says that taking over other planets through this infection is just what they do. He also theorizes they may have simply crash-landed this time, but have decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and are trying to take over the planet anyway. And given how utterly villainous Mr. Gray is while possessing Jonesy, it does seem as though the aliens are simply bastards, through and through.

We see their spaceship in the sequence where Blue Unit attacks them, and it is pretty unique-looking, with a slight flying saucer-shape, a bio-mechanical, somewhat Giger-like feel to its construction, and a mottled design for the hull. When the aliens are forced to retreat inside it during the attack, they rush underneath and hook their pronged tails into special slots on its underside. These slots then lift them up into the ship itself and they activate a self-destruct sequence, which is also not what you would expect. 

The ship's exterior changes from red to a white color, which spreads out from one of the depressions in its hull, and it then seems to leave the Ripley in its wake, which courses throughout the ship and makes it come off as diseased as the cabin's interiors. It finally combusts, sending a huge cloud of the Ripley up into the air that consumes two of the helicopters, before suddenly being sucked right back in, as if by a vacuum.

As entertaining as Morgan Freeman is as Colonel Curtis, and as likable as Tom Sizemore makes Owen Underhill, when you think about it, the two of them are so superfluous to the overall story that they could've been removed altogether. Other than Curtis providing us with a bunch of exposition about how the aliens operate (which wouldn't have been necessary if we'd just stayed with the friends and had them learn nothing other than the bare minimum), most of their scenes add nothing to the plot and just

eat up screentime, contributing to the movie's bloated runtime. Granted, Owen does give Henry and Duddits a ride to the Quabbin Reservoir, but you could've easily had Henry find an abandoned car or peacefully commandeer one that somebody was driving, pick up Duddits, and go on from there. Speaking of which, Henry is the only one of the friends the two of them interact with, so these two "converging" plotlines barely even come together. Curtis' personal vendetta against Owen for betraying him is unceremoniously 

wrapped up not long after it begins, and it amounts to little more than a brief showdown near the reservoir. Said showdown consists of Curtis firing on and then mortally wounding Owen with his chopper's machine gun, while Owen somehow manages to bring the chopper down with just that handgun Curtis gave him! (Yeah, he shot the tail rotor, but that was still pathetic.) And thus, both of them are dead before the final battle with Mr. Gray, so these two great actors were all but wasted. 

A good way to ensure that their time wasn't wasted was to give these characters their own movie. That's another thing about Dreamcatcher: when Curtis and Owen are formally introduced, it feels like a completely different movie has barged in on the one you've been watching for close to the past hour. Following the setup for a horror-themed version of Stand By Me, we're now into something that feels like The X-Files, which then turns into Independence Day during the scene where Blue Unit attacks the

crashed alien ship and wipes out both it and all the other aliens (I hate that they used some of the Velociraptor and T-Rex vocals from Jurassic Park for the aliens in this sequence). That particular scene is the one that makes you wonder if you sat on the remote and switched to a completely different movie, as you watch this squadron of attack helicopters fly in, blowing away these aliens with machine guns and missiles, before they have to retreat because the ship is set to self-destruct, with the ensuing massive 

explosion destroying two of the helicopters. And then, during the third act, the story suddenly becomes Outbreak, right down to the scene where Curtis and Owen walk through the building where the infected are being kept, and Curtis deciding to wipe the infection out by killing everyone in the quarantine zone, regardless of there being a possibility that they can be cured. Finally, after Owen contacts General Matheson, who takes charge and removes Curtis from duty, we get into Curtis hunting Owen down in order to kill him out of revenge, which, like I said, was 

really pointless. In fact, just to put the bow on how meaningless all of this is in the long run, we never learn if Matheson was able to get the infection under control and help those people, or if Curtis was right all along. With a little retooling, this whole subplot could've made for an interesting movie in and of itself, going more into Curtis' history in battling these aliens, how it's badly affected his mental state, and Owen realizing that his friend and superior has become dangerously unhinged and must be stopped. But, as is, it makes this movie so "convoluted."

But it's the story's very core that's truly flawed beyond belief, and it revolves around Duddits. He gave these four kids telekinetic powers when they were young, to prepare them for the arrival of Mr. Gray decades later, but, for one thing, they hardly use their powers. For another, they share the ability to hear people's thoughts but, while Jonesy is able to go inside his mind (which may just be something he was able to formulate outside of his powers) and Pete has the Line, Beaver and Henry don't seem to have any

any powers specific to them. But what's really insulting is that Beaver and Pete get killed very early on, meaning that not only was Duddits' giving them these powers pointless, but so was all the time spent building up their characters and establishing the friendship.

In a sea of idiocy, the dumbest part of this movie has to be the revelation that Duddits himself is an alien. Pete does hint at it early on, so it's not entirely out of left-field, but when he becomes his true, alien form at the end of the film while battling Mr. Gray, you're still left thinking, "You're really going this route?" And despite knowing why Duddits' gave the group their powers, you have to wonder what his plan was exactly. He's an alien, but he comes to Earth, becomes a human child (and a mentally-challenged one, no 

less), gives these guys powers, grows up, gets leukemia, and then takes out Mr. Gray himself, dying in the process. Meanwhile, Pete and Beaver got killed without contributing anything, Jonesy provided Mr. Gray with an earthly vessel to possess, and Henry just gets Duddits to the final battle. So, what was the point of giving these kids powers if he himself was going to fight Mr. Gray? Why didn't he just stop him before he even landed on Earth? Is Duddits mentally challenged and deathly ill as an alien as well? Also, if he's an alien, then how can he have a human mother? 

And why did he, by all accounts, arrange it so that Jonesy would be an attractive vessel for Mr. Gray to possess? As he and Owen are driving, Henry suggests that the reason why Jonesy is able to survive being possessed is because he technically died when he got hit by the car, as his heart stopped twice. In short, this is the reason why Duddits lured Jonesy into the car's path, which makes him an awfully shitty friend, given all that Jonesy is put through.

In both the novel and the movie's original ending, Duddits is telepathic but not an alien himself. Already, this is a better idea since, if he was just a normal, cancer-stricken human who happened to have telekinesis, it would've been easier to accept that he couldn't just stop Mr. Gray himself. However, while in the former, Henry and Jonesy aid him in killing Mr. Gray at the reservoir, the alternate movie ending still has Duddits kill Mr. Gray himself, using a power similar to Peter's "Line." Once Mr. Gray has been

vanquished, Duddits succumbs to his disease, and the final scene cuts to some time later, as Jonesy and Henry visit his grave, where they sing Blue Bayou. I think the book's ending is the best one, since it gives Jonesy and Henry a role in defeating Mr. Gray, but the alternate film ending, if nothing else, doesn't have the dumb revelation about Duddits being an alien. It still wouldn't have been great, but it would've better than what we got. But I guess it was felt it wasn't "exciting" enough, even though the confusing CGI

mishmash that we do get isn't much better on that score. When he stomps towards him, Mr. Gray snags Duddits from behind with his tail, flings him to the ground, and seemingly kills him by impaling him through the chest. But just as Mr. Gray is about to go for Henry next, he finds that Duddits is restraining him, which is when he himself morphs into an alien (which looks horrendous, as you saw earlier). Seemingly infected with the Ripley, he produces a pronged tail similar to Mr. Gray's, stabs him in the back, infecting him as well, and it takes them both 

out, encasing them in a fleshy membrane, before they explode into a cloud of red dust that then gradually dissipates. And Jonesy ends the movie by stomping the one surviving shit-weasel offspring before it can make its way into the reservoir, before it suddenly cuts to the credits, with shots from the dinner table discussion and the Memory Warehouse from before, as well as audio from that scene and when they were kids.

In the book, the title (which was originally Cancer, before Stephen King's wife suggested he change it) is given some relevance, as the boys not only share each other's dreams as part of their powers, but it ends with Jonesy and Henry talking about what happened months later, hitting on the notion that Mr. Gray was caught within Jonesy's mind like with a dreamcatcher. However, in the movie, while the dreamcatcher is referenced many times, as you images of it during the opening credits, the guys sometimes draw it, there's 

one hanging from the cabin's ceiling, and such, it has virtually no significance to the story. (The tagline and trailer would have you believe it does, saying, "Sometimes evil slips through," but, as we've seen, this evil was expected and didn't slip through at all.) Beaver at one point refers to Duddits as, "Our dreamcatcher," Jonesy tells Rick McCarthy what it is when he brings him into the cabin, and the second flashback begins with them bringing some dreamcatchers they made in art class, including one for Duddits, strengthening their bond, but that's it.

And when Duddits and Mr. Gray are both destroyed at the end, the red mist they evaporate into briefly takes on the vague shape of a dreamcatcher but, again, what this means in the context of this adaptation's story is unclear. 

I really don't like how the movie is loaded up the ass with CGI, from the creatures to the various strange visuals that appear onscreen and the numerous instances of digital snow. I think there are a few quick instances where the shit-weasels are done through puppetry, such as when they're attacking someone and the person is struggling with them; the eggs they lay are definitely practical, as is the Ripley rash on humans; and there are some true gore effects when Rick McCarthy dies in the bathroom, Beaver gets the

fingers on his right hand chewed off by the first shit-weasel, and miscellaneous bloody moments here and there. But other than that, all of the effects work is digital and has not aged well. Sometimes it looks decent enough, like when Henry finds the Ripley spreading throughout the cabin's interior, but for the most part, like in many shots of the shit-weasels and the other alien creatures, it looks bad (and it's Industrial Light & Magic, which is especially disappointing). As you saw, the final battle between Duddits and Mr. Gray really looks bad, like

something out of a PS2 game, as does much of the scene where Blue Unit attacks the alien ship and the aliens flee back in it, before activating the self-destruct. And even the first real look at Mr. Gray in the cabin, despite its nice detail, doesn't look real at all, and makes you wish they could've made more use of animatronics and puppets.

One more genuine compliment that I can give Dreamcatcher before we head out is that the music score is very well done. It's not surprising, seeing as how it's James Newton Howard, who's a great composer, and what he goes for is often nicely atmospheric. The main theme, which you hear over the opening credits and during one of the flashbacks, is an eerie, twirling sort of piece that also sounds rather child-like, and there are a number of wonderfully mysterious themes, like when the friends are calling each other at the beginning, talking about the strange, disturbing feelings they've been having lately. The really scary and horrific music is also well done, including this big, bombastic theme heard when you first see Mr. Gray, and the same goes for the music for the action scenes, even if the sequences themselves aren't the best. The only part of the score I don't really care for is this sort of techno bit that plays over the first part of the ending credits (the music it transitions into isn't that bad). And finally, during the introduction to the Memory Warehouse, you hear the actual song of Blue Bayou, sung by Roy Orbison, which is a nice, soothing tune.

Dreamcatcher is probably not the absolute Stephen King adaptation, or even the worst movie that's somehow connected to King, as I'm sure a number of those Children of the Corn and Mangler sequels are even worse. However, it is the definition of cinematic epic fail, and what really sucks is that it starts off so well, with a set-up of some great actors playing a likable group of friends who have an interesting backstory, and intriguing initial hints at what's coming. What's more, it has a number of capable people behind the camera, is very visually appealing,

has great, striking location work and production design, and a great music score. But, around 40-to-50-minute mark, it unravels and becomes a muddled, schizophrenic, over-complicated mess, with characters who are killed off too soon, subplots and additional characters that could've been removed, ridiculous details about the aliens, badly-dated and overused CGI, a story whose very core is horribly flawed, and a running time that could've been drastically shortened. It may never have been a classic, but it had been stream-lined and focused on the four friends coming together and using their powers to battle the aliens, it would've been so much better. I don't out and out hate Dreamcatcher, but because of the sheer wasted potential alone, I have to put it in Movies That Suck.