"Dreamcatcher" review

Dreamcatcher (2003)

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Writing credits William Goldman

Morgan Freeman.... Col. Abraham Curtis
Thomas Jane.... Dr. Henry Devlin
Jason Lee.... Joe 'Beaver' Clarenden
Damian Lewis.... Gary 'Jonesy' Jones
Timothy Olyphant.... Pete Moore
Tom Sizemore.... Lt. Owen Underhill
Donnie Wahlberg.... Douglas 'Duddits' Cavell

First off, any movie with alien worms out the wazoo I must like in some way. Unlike other horror flicks that deem it unnecessary to show you a monster, "Dreamcatcher" delivers incubating space worms and other E.T. unfriendlies. I appreciated the monsters. They delivered the slime and blood I've come to love and cherish. I'm sorry to say though that the movie feels like it was edited with a lawnmower. Normally, I would take my anal space worm attacks and go home happy. But "Dreamcatcher" is so disjointed that you get the distinct impression that the book must have explained a lot of what you're seeing. I wished I had a set of Cliff Notes with me while I was watching it. The movie makes you start asking yourself a bunch of questions. For instance...

*SPOILER ON ENDING AND LOTS OF OTHER SPOILERS*

OK, so Duddits is an alien. So why does he warn these four kids about an upcoming invasion? Was there something special about these kids? Was the alien just waiting for someone to be nice to him? Why does an alien choose as his disguise a retarded kid? Surely he could have picked something a little more fun while he's waiting for the worm invasion. And if he knows aliens are coming, why doesn't he do something about it instead of wasting away on Earth and hoping his four buddies figure it out? One alien takes over one of the humans. Why was the bad alien called "Mr. Grey"? Did the human host have a thing for English bad guys? And finally, why call the movie "Dreamcatcher"? I saw no Dream Catching. Nor did I understand why being a Dreamcatcher was important to anybody. Why not call it "Attack of the Slime Worms"?

*END SPOILERS*

When the movie was over, I realized it would have helped a lot if I had read the book. I'm sure all my questions would have been answered. The movie "Dreamcatcher" just couldn't put it all together. But on the plus side, there were ravenous space worms.

SCORE: 2 out of 4 very scared animals running from confusing aliens