Dreamcatcher:
Fun in a RecurringNightmare Sort of Way
Dreamcatcher:
Fun in a RecurringThese were a few of the audience reactions I overheard after my recent preview
screening of Dreamcatcher. "It was like Outbreak." "No,
it was like Tremors." "Hey, it was like The Thing."
"Uh, hello! It was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
"No, it was more like Alien." And therein lies the problem,
ladies and gents. Dreamcatcher is a mishmash of so many other movies
and movie influences that it never seems uniquely its own. And by the way, you
can also throw in my observations: "It was just like E.T., Invasion
of the Body Snatchers, and The Blob." And because it's based
on a novel by horror maestro Stephen King (a book he wrote while likely
whacked out on painkillers following that horrible accident where he was struck
by a vehicle a few years ago), you can also find MAJOR similarities with Stand
by Me and The Shining.
That said, I want you to know I enjoyed the time I logged watching Dreamcatcher.
I kind of treated the movie like a game, a spot-the-movie-influence game. King
and writer-director Lawrence Kasdan are clearly in love with the idea
of making a creature feature for the 21st century, that honors the conventions
of the monster movies they spent way too much of their youth watching in theaters
and on late-night TV years ago. The film follows four childhood friends who
meet once a year in a snowy New England cabin to reminisce about their teen
years, play cards, drink beer, hunt game, and pay tribute to a fifth guy they
knew way back when named "Dudditz."
Dudditz was a retarded kid the quartet saved from being beaten by a trio of
local jocks. But he was special somehow, beyond the kind of "special"
that most people apply to such people. Dudditz seemed otherworldly somehow,
and he gave to the four friends special psychic powers that are augmented anytime
they're all together. The powers bonded them. But as the plot unfolds, these
same powers may be just what the world needs to save it from ... an alien threat
(!), one that the grown-up Dudditz (Donnie Wahlberg) may know something
about.
Dreamcatcher is a strange, strange flick. The film is eminently watchable.
It has all the things that stir the 14-year-old boy still inside of me (yeah,
I know, last week in my Agent Cody Banks review, I said it appealed to
the 12-year-old boy inside of me. Hey, gimme a cheap sex comedy next week with
lots of boobies, and you'll see reawakened the beastly hormonal 16-year-old
who chucked the comic books and Star Wars tapes and had his face slapped
one too many times). Oh yeah. Dreamcatcher has monsters and blood. People
getting their faces gnawed on by snake-like worms (or, worm-like snakes) with
big fangs. It's got helicopter gunships firing missiles on a crashed alien mothership
(Industrial Light and Magic did some exceptional work for this flick). It's
got crazy generals, big Hummer trucks, gun-toting soldiers, and Tom Sizemore
yelling, "Lock and load."
It's got all dat stuff, man! And my lap was just full of popcorn kernels that
missed my mouth when the flick was over.
The problem is ... I ain't really 14 anymore. The film has too much stuff in
it for this 32-year-old. There is no focus to the storytelling, and I kind of
became annoyed in the last half of the picture as the plot went all over the
place. It's a story about psychics. No, wait, it's a story about an alien invasion.
No, no, it's a story about containing a virus. No, I think I got it this time.
It's a story about possession. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket. Oh, no, wait!
It's now a story about ... the list goes on.
When Dreamcatcher is really good, it's centered on the four main characters.
The buddies in the woods. And I liked all of them. There was Henry (Thomas
Jane), a psychiatrist who is distraught over using his psychic abilities
to know things his patients aren't ready to tell him. There was Jonesy (British
actor Damian Lewis, in a terrific American debut performance), the red-headed
college professor who is the most gifted of the four. There was Beaver (Jason
Lee), a latter-day hipster with a funny way of talking. And the most tragic
of the four, Pete (Timothy Olyphant), a guy who wanted to become an astronaut
but has settled for a life of booze and selling used cars.
When the movie goes haywire is when the military come in and quarantine the
area of forest where the guys are camping. From then on, the plot keeps jumping
around and the interest level wanes as Kasdan is unable to sustain a constant
level of tension. There is a bathroom scene about halfway through that is just
extraordinary in its tension and its payoff. But nothing comes close after that
to matching that sequence's effectiveness. Kasdan simply has too many balls
in the air.
I also learned some other interesting tidbits after the screening was over.
Apparently, the last half of the film is substantially different from the last
half of the book (which I have not read). Now aware of the differences, I think
it's save to say the movie may work best for those who have never read King's
novel. Like I said, Dreamcatcher will have great appeal for those who
love creature features or alien-invasion flicks with A-list production values
And, maybe, that's all I should have expected from this movie. But I don't know.
If that's the case, I wish Kasdan and Co. hadn't teased me with such a strong,
focused, wonderful first half of the flick. There is a part of me that can't
help feeling this was one dream unfulfilled.
Dreamcatcher is rated R for violence, gore, and language.
[Home]