More Psychic! Less Aliens!
In the 70's and part of the 80's, Miller Lite had a batch of commericals with people arguing over why they liked Miller Lite. It was because it had great taste or cause it was less filling. Huge arguments would arise, probably ending friendships, starting wars, and leading to the start of reality TV. Hey I need to blame reality TV on something.
Anyway, a similar argument between two friends could go something like this.
"I like movies with psychic powers!"
"No! I like movies with aliens!"
"Psychic powers!"
"Aliens!"
And just go on like that until they start hitting each other with a tire iron. But, thankfully, Stephen King stepped up and said "HEY! I got a movie that has BOTH psyhic powers AND aliens!" and a hush fell over the fighting crowd.
Yes, this movie is based on a story by Stephen King, but it's not your typical King fare. The movie starts with Dr. Henry, a psychiatrist who insults a fat patient. This causes him, Henry, to put a gun to his head. This won't be explained so don't even bother trying to figure it out. He gets a call from "Jonesy", a teacher of sorts. Later, "Beaver", played by Jason Lee, calls Jonesy. They all agree to see each other and go see what "Duddits" is up to.
But Jonesy, walking home, decides to step into traffic and get hit by a car. This is sort of explained later on. We get told he died but it jumps to six months later and he, along with Beaver, Henry, and another friend named Pete, who's a used car salesman, show up at a cabin in the woods in Maine.
They all drink and talk about crap, then the flashbacks begin.
When they were all kids, they walked by some factory and they heard some older kids picking on a "retarded" (They called him that, don't sue me) kid. The four kids stop the older kids and befriend the "special" (Better?) kid. He turns out to be Duddits.
That flashback ends and it's the next day. Jonesy is out hunting when he stumbles upon some old fat dude wandering in the woods. Jonesy brings him in and notices he's got a red mark on his face. Beaver returns and introduces himself when the old fat dude, named Rick, starts burping, then farting. Rick feels bad and asks to lay down so he does.
Meanwhile, Pete and Henry are out driving when they see some lady sitting in the middle of the road. This scares them and they total their car. They're alright, so they go check on the lady. She's near frozen to death, so they decide to take her with. But she's kinda slowing them down so Henry decides to walk back to the cabin while Pete stays with the "broad". Yet again, movie's term, not mine.
Beaver and Jonesy find a trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom and they break down the door.
Ok, I'm gonna say that up until this part the movie was pretty good and entertaining. But then we get this scene and it starts to go downhill.
Inside the bathroom is a whole shitload of blood and Rick on the toilet. He's dead but we hear a distinct drop. Pushing him off the toilet they find...
Man I can't believe I'm about to type this sentence...
That Rick shitted out an alien.
I need a therapist.
Beaver closes the lid and tries to keep him contained while Jonesy goes to the shed to get some tape to tape the lid shut. But that doesn't matter cause Beaver has this weird habit of sucking on toothpicks and while trying to reach for one he lets the alien go. What does the alien look like? A big giant worm or eel. With big ass teeth. It kills Beaver and is about to kill Jonesy when an alien that we all expect to look appear and possesses Jonesy.
Man...this movie is really heading downhill.
Among all this, we find helicopters flying around and animals running for their lives. The people in the helicopters are part of the "Blue Squad", which is lead by Col. Abe Curtis, played by Morgan Freeman. And Curtis-boy here, he's got some killer eyebrows, let me tell you. Curtis is an expert on aliens, knew they were coming, knows all their tricks, and somewhat knows how to stops them. He explains what they are doing here.
To sum it up, they "crashlanded" here, plan on staying, and they plan on taking over by having the earthlings give anal birth to their pets...or whatever they are. That part isn't exactly clear. What is clear however?
The alien that possessed Jonesy, he speaks in a FREAKIN BRITISH ACCENT!! I shit you not, no pun attended. Oh and the real Jonsey is locked up inside, just only able to look out. It's kinda hard to describe, but it's what Jonsey calls his "Mental Warehouse". And Jonsey is able to communite with the alien, who is called Mr. Grey. More on that later.
Pete, meanwhile, finds the little worm/eel thing and manages to kill it. But he gets picked up by Jonsey, who wants to know how to get to the highway. Through this special power that reminded me of "Donnie Darko" he shows him. Then we get another flashback.
The four of them, and Duddits, who's real name, I should mention is Douglas, try to find a missing girl. So they ask Duddits, who they know has special powers, to find her. He, in turn, gives all four of them this special power, which enables them to hear each other's and other people's thoughts. They use the "Donnie Darko" special effects to find her.
So we come back to the present and Mr. Grey is intreged that these human's have these special powers. But he kill's Pete because he insulted him one too many times.
Henry comes back to the cabin to find a shitload of blood everywhere, and the worm/eel thing hatching eggs. He decides to torch the place, which is a damn good idea and can't believe a character in a movie like this came up with it. So thankfully the babies burn, along with the wonderful memories of the cabin.
Henry is hiking when Curtis' agents find him and take him back to the concentration camp-I MEAN the place Curtis set up for infested people. Curtis and his right hand man, Owen (Tom Sizemore), go on a flyby mission and find the crashed spaceship and decide to shoot at the aliens. They try to fight back but they decide suicide is their best bet and blow up the ship.
Curtis tells Owen that he's probably gonna end up killing the infected humans, even though Owen said that the humans will probably survive the infection and the ass babies.
When Henry arrives, he wow's Owen with his psychic powers and tells him Curtis is in fact quite insane and that he should call some actual military guys to help out.
Mr. Grey, meanwhile, gets a dog pregnant with the ass worms (I just love calling them that) and goes on a road trip to the town's water supply so the dog can shit into the water and infect the whole town, which in turn would infect the whole world.
Henry and Owen decide to pick up Duddits cause he'll know how to stop Mr. Grey, whom he calls Mr. Gay.
Now...we got psychics, butt aliens, aliens with British accents, pregnant dogs, and Morgan Freeman with crazy ass eyebrows. What else do we need? Hmmm...
I KNOW!! A NEW KID ON THE BLOCK!!!
Yes, the one and only Donnie Wahlberg plays the adult Duddits. THE Donnie Wahlberg, who sang "Come on everybody, take a chance, lets do the New Kid's Dance!" plays a psychic retarded guy.
Henry and Owen pick him up and they go to the water supply to stop Mr. Grey from letting a dog shit in the water supply. But Curtis, who had a tracking device in Owen's gun (Don't even bother to ask), follows them and shoots at Owen. Owen manages to shoot Curtis down before dying. So it's up to Henry and Duddits to stop Mr. Grey and the alien shitting dog.
Do they manage to stop them in time? Why does Mr. Grey want to do this? Why does Mr. Grey know Duddits and Duddits about Mr. Grey? Was Stephen King on crack when he wrote this?
The answers:
Yes. I don't know. They never explain this, they never explain that, and yes I would say he smoked quite a lot.
Anyway, Mr. Grey is dead, Duddits is dead, and Henry and Jonesy are the only ones alive to talk about this for the rest of their psychic lives.
ARRGH!!! WHY did they ruin this with the shit alien story? I honestly thought the whole psychic kids story was great and would've been the better movie. Then we get people shitting aliens? And a British alien possessing people?
I should mention the movie loses credibility when Henry uses Owen's gun as a phone to talk to the Good Jonesy. Don't even ask, my mind just melted at this point.
And I have seen way worse movies (Leprechaun 4, April Fool's Day, Swept Away), but this could've been way better. And coming from Stephen King, I should've expected better. And I should note that the only reason I reviewed this movie was cause of a friend I made recently who mentioned this movie in passing when she told me that Morgan Freeman read a script that called for people to shit out aliens and said "Sign me up!". So I'd like to thank her. Now I got some awful images in my head.
2 stars.
"Dreamcatcher" on IMDb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285531/