Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Bizarre and courageously gruesome, this film inspired by the Stephen King novel of the same name gives a rise to an idea that boasted potential, regardless of how questionable it gets with its exercise into outlandishness. Crippling the underlining potential of its concept is the schlocky execution by director Lawrence Kasdan who fails to provide enough satisfying thrills and narrative compulsion to compensate for all the silliness and its failure to juggle a multitude of ideas at once that dominates the overall picture. For a film with a promising start, Dreamcatcher is a grave disappointment sparking with entertaining value that can only possibly be found in the unintentional laughter perpetrated by its poor attempts at landing good scares and thrills in the midst of its stomach-churning gore. And that is not even including Kasden and co-writer William Goldman's struggle to come up with good dialogue for the characters. Set in Maine, typical for Stephen King adaptations, this film deals with a quad of childhood friends: Henry (played by Thomas Jane), Beaver (played by Jason Lee), Jonesy (played by Damien Lewis), and Pete (played by Timothy Olyphant). These four are reuniting for a camping trip in the woods. Upon rescuing a frostbitten man lost in the woods, the four men discover that this man is infected with an alien parasite that threatens to invade the town. As these men, with their telepathic abilities, band together to fight against this mysterious alien invasion, they must cross paths with their old mentally ill friend Duddits (played by Donnie Wahlberg) to help stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, Army Colonel Abraham Curtis (played by Morgan Freeman) and his accomplice Owen Underhill (played by Tom Sizemore) in placed in the fight to save their town from the invasion as well. A good science-fiction horror piece requires a compelling idea blended with solid, edge-of-your-seat scares and thrills to keep your pulse pounding, and this film unfortunately contains neither of these. The dominating flaw in this film is that its filled with too many ideas to shuffle and not enough thought on how to blend them into a firm, coherent plot. Serving as the pedestal of the story is four men spending their weekend drinking booze and hunting deer, while recounting on the good ole days before being interrupted by a man who has, ahem!, an alien bursts out of his rear-end while sitting on the toilet. This odd episode transpires into an inert alien invasion plot that at least could have worked as a disposable gorefest. But add the subplot of the men acquiring telepathic powers, demonstrated in flashbacks of them as children, and the film is tasked with a difficult feat to blend it with the plot revolving around their battle with a vicious alien scum. With the script failing to do so, the overarching result is a hot mess of story alternating between laughably inept and convoluted to the point where the story swiftly loses it track of how schlocky it gets. The cast, particularly the four main actors Damien Lewis, Jason Lee, Thomas Jane, and Timothy Olyphant, display performances that never ski past the line of.....acceptable. It's awfully difficult to take such a stellar cast seriously when they strewn into a script pitting them with slipshod dialogue and awkward one-liners. It appears as if Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore is the only ones landing solid performances, but it is only too bad that their characters are even less interesting than our already underwritten main characters. Dreamcatcher is not the Stephen King adaptation we deserve. It is inept, sloppy, and plunges below the grounds of quality adaptations to the works of one of the greatest writers working today. Hollywood has boasted plenty of adaptation of King's works that warrant high praise for soaking their viewers into entertainment craze, this is not one of them. And if you wondering if this falls into the category of "so bad its good", my best answer would be probably not.

I only watched it because I'd just read the book and wanted to see how the film told the story. Such a lot of the best bits of the story missing. and the ridiculous finale is not in the book at all. The acting is mostly incredibly clunky (read - lousy), even Damian. I think the only reason Mr Gray had the posh English accent is because Damian went to Eton, and could put it on. I could go on. But you've been warned.

Compared to the book, yeah, it stinks...but that's really only because it got lost somewhere in translation from prose to screen.Take it as it is, take it as a movie and its not half bad, the problem is that, once you leave the book behind what you have is an old fashioned B horror movie that is trying to sell itself in an era where B horror movies need the special effects of modern super hero movies and the basic plot of a Dick and Jane novel.And then, in many ways, it's just too expensive. It feels like a classic Drive-In horror flick, but it looks like a block buster. Tone down the budget by a few million and make it a direct to video movie and it would have cult classic status already...despite the people that actually read the source material.The acting is good, the special effects are too good, the setting is cool, but the plot hurts a bit and the fact that Duddits is Intellectually Disabled is inevitably going to put off more that a few viewers.Really though, what you have is a great B Movie Drive-In fair that somehow got an actual budget wot work with. And you could do a lot worse in this Post New Hollywood day and age.

Four buddies with superpowers given to them by an alien that may or may not be mentally handicapped, have to team up to stop poop monsters from making people get icky tummies. Really, that's the movie. Wow....Questions abound in this thing. It is more dubious than Wicker Man. How do the aliens work? What's their reproduction cycle? Are the *hit weasels actually the same species? Why is it called Dreamcatcher? Is Duddits mentally handicapped or just has a speech impediment? Who is Duddits? Did his mom screw an alien? Seriously, what's with Morgan Freeman's eyebrows...the list goes on and on. We were able to figure The Wicker Man out but this one defeated us. We just can't come up with theories to answer these....We all absolutely loved Dreamcatcher. Its got all the qualities fans of bad movies look for. It keeps moving and never loses your interest in what is on screen even when you can't make heads or tails of what you are seeing. The story and key events are so confusing and dubious that you can talk with other viewers about theories and try to answer questions for hours afterwards. There's entire forums dedicated to trying to hypothesize what the hell happens in this train wreck. It's highly recommended you spend the time to view this masterpiece of horrendous film-making.Read more at: http://www.stinkermadness.com/episodes/movie- reviews/entry/films/dreamcatcher