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'Dreamcatcher' frigid, weak
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, March 20, 2003
John Behling -- Film Critic
While leaving the theatre after an advanced screening of the new Stephen King adaptation "Dreamcatcher," I couldn't help but reflect on the security measures Warner Brothers undertook to ensure the screening was free of recording devices.
Every bag and purse was searched and two security guards scanned the audience during the feature with night vision scopes, attempting to catch any would-be bootleggers. I couldn't help but wonder after having seen the film, why Warner Brothers doesn't focus on making movies worth stealing, rather than making sure that no one's stealing them.
Ripped from the pages of Stephen King's bestseller, "Dreamcatcher" makes a desperate plea for the horror/suspense market share that has been dormant as of late, with the last memorable horror film, "The Ring," now being released on video.
This snow-bound attempted thriller etches the tale of four best friends on their annual hunting trip to a secluded cabin, who end up fighting for their lives against a dangerous and infectious alien foe. In order to stop the alien contagion, the four must reach back to their childhood and to when they met a special friend who endowed each with a form of E.S.P.
While reading this book two years ago, I had to scratch my head in disbelief both at the ending (which has been completely rewritten and is now even worse in the film version) and King's heavy borrowing from previous works.
A group of kids fighting off bullies and gaining a supernatural power to later battle some evil force in adulthood: does that sound like "IT" to anyone else? And appropriately these scenes transfer over to the movie looking as if they've been neatly lifted from the 1990 TV production of "IT" and serve as another reminder that Stephen King novels should stick with the format they've been remarkably successful with: the television mini-series movie.
While a three to four hour version of "Dreamcatcher" might be able to sustain audience interest and also tell the complete story, this 136 minute version diffuses into too many subplots as the story just becomes too big for the time allotted.
However, in the first 40 minutes you will find its only redeeming qualities. A rapid history sets up the four friends and their gift (played by Thomas Jane, Jason Leigh, Damian Lewis and Timothy Olyphant). Quickly the plot moves to its best location, the snowed in cabin in the woods. This is where the film teases the audience by promising a tightly-knit story revolving around the four protagonists, the horrific enemy and their inherently scary environment.
When the film covers these four characters, it's at its best, but sadly this short time passes as the film abandons character chemistry and cabin fever suspense to become a blown out of proportion science fiction epic (at a breakneck pace). By the time Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore, playing characters who represent a covert anti-alien sect of the military, enter the picture, audience attention is already dwindling and sadly there's still more cast to come.
During "Dreamcatcher's" golden moment, it evokes a taut atmosphere of impending dread, conjuring up images of John Carpenter's 1982 horror Sci-Fi classic "The Thing," and showing that King's story has the potential to frighten, and Kasdan's frigid direction has the potential to capitalize on this suspense.
But King's fundamental weakness is he isn't satisfied with telling a small story resulting in fictional works that balloon in a way that's more similar to the film's unfortunate casualties who become infected with alien parasites. Kasdan is equally at fault for not recognizing the script's mortal flaws and for taking King's terrible ending and turning it into an even worse one.
