Dreamcatcher (2003)

Nice effects though.

A Masterpiece!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a movie adaptation of the novel Dreamcatcher written by Stephen King. It stars Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, and Morgan Freeman. It tells the story of childhood friends who go on a trip out into the snowy woods and come across a horrifying discovery. This film is not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting a weird but very interesting film about old childhood friends discovering this intriguing thing in the woods, what I got was something different than that. I got a film that really was not all that interesting. It was a movie with long stretches of very boring and uninteresting happenings. The aliens in the film that they come across are cardboard cut outs recycled from previous movies, they could've made them cool and mysterious, maybe reveal something we've never seen before, but no they decided to waste that opportunity. That truthfully is how I feel about this entire film, a big fat wasted opportunity. It could've been a thought provoking mysterious film, but instead it turned out to be uninteresting and disappointing. The acting is off and on, Freeman was good but other members of the cast were a little spotty, sometimes good and other times kinda laughable. 3/10 for Dreamcatcher. Just not worth your time.

I would never have thought I'd give any film with Morgan Freeman in it a bad review.It was almost as if all the actors were directed to act badly. Even a poor script can be saved by great actors but not in this case. Pommy accent to indicate the alien speaking? What the freaking hell?It felt like a 90's tele-movie. Those flashback scenes with the vomit inducing 'nice' virtuous, telepathic young boys: straight out of a Disney film. No kid ever did stuff like that, especially when they are in a group.And what the hell was the Duddits transformation about?Good special FX and CGI.

This film I enjoyed the character interactions between the 5 boys (young or grown) most off all - those scenes were the most interesting to me, more so than the actual alien scenes. This is NOT the greatest film based on a Stephen King book but it is an entertaining movie.The film is about one guy: a special boy, Duddits, that made friends with 4 other boys. Duddits gave the other boys special gifts. They have all grown up and the 4 boys, now men, have met in their private camp and they are still wondering about Duddits and the gifts given to them... wondering if these gifts were preparing them for something. This turns out to be the most horrible trip for all of them - something big about to happen.6/10

Having read the source material by Stephen King I really enjoyed Dreamcatcher, with well developed characters who I cared for, and a story that was coherent, made sense and (baring in mind it's primarily Sci-Fi) was fairly believable. The film however lacked all of this.I'll start with what I liked about the film. The casting was generally good, all of the characters largely looked how I had imagined them on the page and they appear to give their best efforts at a poorly written screenplay. It is also shot quite nicely, however if you have to resort to commenting on how good the film looks, there is clearly something lacking from what is most important about a film, which is to my mind story and character. Unfortunately that is about all that I can say that's good about Dreamcatcher and the bad points far outweigh the good.The story writing and dialogue is sloppy, which may not be the director or the screenwriters fault as the book is quite content heavy. The characters are introduced very quickly and as a viewer you learn nothing of real consequence about them, which leads to me as a viewer lacking an emotional connection to them. With the exception of Jonesy the friends are meant to be introduced as being unhappy with their lives, particularly Beaver, who is only happy once reunited with his friends for their annual hunting trip, which (among other things) gives his death more emotional weight. Pete is meant to have a serious drink problem that he desperately tries to hide from his friends without success. Henry is very depressed, and like Pete tries to hide this, but also like Pete without success. None of this is covered in any detail in the film, it is briefly pointed out and then forgotten.The motivation of Owen and Curtis are really poorly done. Owen agrees to help Henry despite having not shown a great deal of resistance to the atrocities he is being ordered to commit beforehand, and having spoken to Henry for just a minute agrees to help him escape. In the book, Curtis is consistently proving himself to be mad and interested only in self preservation, his character is given a lot more time to earn his furious chase after Owen, rather than Freeman's portrayal of Curtis, who appears to have no motivation.The need to make Mr.Grey speak in a posh English accent and be constantly happy and polite was stupid as well. Mr.Grey is meant to be a character whose emotional capabilities are limited to either, extremely calm and in control or overwhelmingly frustrated and angry, slowly gaining the full range of human emotion the longer he spends inhabiting Jonsey's body. The flash backs also fail to give enough back story to make us appreciate the strength of the five kids friendship. The writing for the kids in particular is really bad, which I guess at least matches the poor acting ability of said kid actors.Overall while Dreamcatcher is not in anyway offensive, and is a perfectly tolerable, it is boring and incoherent. It lacks any kind of depth in the writing department, which granted, may have been due to the mass of content available to the creators, and makes me wonder is perhaps Dreamcatcher wouldn't be more suited to being a TV miniseries. However with the cast and source material available Dreamcatcher should have been a great deal better than it was, a very underwhelming adaptation.