Dreamcatcher

What's the Plot?

Jonesy (Damian Lewis), Henry (Thomas Jane), Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Beaver (Jason Lee) have been best of friends for over 20 years. When they were young, an act of heroism towards a seemingly mentally-retarded child left them with what they then considered a gift, but over the years has become more of a burden. The four friends have not seen the strange boy - Duddits - in a long time until one of them ends up in a serious accident believing that they saw him calling for help across a busy street. Six months after the accident, the four head out to their usual retreat - a cabin in the north woods - to relax and reflect upon old times. This will not be the case when a lost hunter with a terrible contagion appears and is closely followed by a dangerous blizzard. It's when they notice all the wildlife fleeing the area and army helicopters patrolling the skies - led by Colonel Curtis (Morgan Freeman) - that the four friends begin to realise that something else lurks in the oncoming blizzard: something that will test their loyalty, their powers and all of human existence if they fail to stop it. Only they have the capability to stop it. That is if Colonel Curtis and his 2nd in command - Owen Underhill (Tom Sizemore) don't stop them first!

Beaver (Jason Lee)

The Review

There's a really great movie lurking somewhere in Dreamcatcher but the audience, along with the film-makers, may have one hell of a time trying to find it. A lot of Stephen King's adaptations have fallen short of the mark with his books proving too complicated to be bought successfully to the screen. This latest effort tries to put as much as it can into it's 135 minute running time, but the material would have been best served as a TV mini-serial where all the different genres that are fighting for screen time would have had their fair share of the limelight.

Henry (Thomas Jane) and Owen Underhill (Tom Sizemore)

You see, the problem with Dreamcatcher is it doesn't seem to be able to make up it's mind what it is: horror, science fiction, comedy, coming-of-age, action-thriller - all these different elements are pushed together leaving a very muddled impression upon the viewer. Some of the clashes of genres works well - a horrific, scary but funny sequence involving 2 of the friends discovering exactly what is wrong with the lost stranger who locks himself in the toilet is a perfect example - but other times it just feels too forced and sways towards the extremes. The military segments are way too macho - with a shock revelation of the normally dependable Morgan Freeman going so far overboard that you could use him as a flotation device - and the Stand By Me type coming-of-age bits are way too sugar-coated to sit with the rest of the film, although the nod to that King adaptation is rather nice.

The Forur Friends (Damian Lewis, Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant and Jason Lee)

Those quibbles aside, the film moves along at a quick pace, providing enough laughs - intentional and otherwise - to keep the audience happy and for the more discerning viewer, it has a wonderful way of depicting Jonesy's mind and his "memory warehouse". This is a place where Jonesy retreats in his mind to avoid an alien possession and helps to give the film some clever camera work therefore putting it above most of the abysmal action movies of late. Good, but could have been so much better if more tightly controlled.

STEVE'S SCORE