Dreamcatcher (DVD)

Stephen King books don't often translate terribly well to film. I suspect that part of the reason behind this is because he writes at such length and with so much imagination that creating accurate pictures from words alone isn't always easy. Some of his longest work is mauled so badly by the time it reaches the screen that it loses a lot of the magic. The books of his that translate best are often his shorter ones, with "The Shawshank Redemption" ...
...his shorter ones, nor one of his better ones, which made the film a lot less likely to be any good.

I didn't bother seeing "Dreamcatcher" at the cinema, as I was sure in advance that it wouldn't be worth it. When the DVD came out, however, it contained a promise of something decent. One of the extras was listed as "Dream Writer - An Interview With Stephen King". For a fan of the author, this made it worth a look.
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Stephen King books don't often translate terribly well to film. I suspect that part of the reason behind this is because he writes at such length and with so much imagination that creating accurate pictures from words alone isn't always easy. Some of his longest work is mauled so badly by the time it reaches the screen that it loses a lot of the magic. The books of his that translate best are often his shorter ones, with "The Shawshank Redemption" being a prime example. "Dreamcatcher" is neither one of his shorter ones, nor one of his better ones, which made the film a lot less likely to be any good.

I didn't bother seeing "Dreamcatcher" at the cinema, as I was sure in advance that it wouldn't be worth it. When the DVD came out, however, it contained a promise of something decent. One of the extras was listed as "Dream Writer - An Interview With Stephen King". For a fan of the author, this made it worth a look.

Four friends gather at a log cabin deep in the woods of Maine, ready for a hunting trip. They've known each other a long time and share the companionship only generated by being comfortable with each other. This is their twentieth trip to this same log cabin and nothing suggests that it's going to be anything different from the previous nineteen. That feeling lasts for as long as it takes for Jonesy and Beaver to rescue a lost fan in the woods and for Henry to crash their van, not only cutting off their obvious escape route, but also leaving Pete hurt.

At first glance, these four men have very little in common, working in wildly different fields, from car sales to psychiatry. None of them are having the best time of it, as Jonesy has had a badly broken leg after an accident, after which he died in the ambulance, Pete is an alcoholic and when we first see Henry, he's just moments away from holding a loaded gun to his own head. The one good thing they all have is a memory of a day back in school, when they saved another boy, Duddits, from being beaten up by bigger kids. Duddits is special and, ever since that day, they've all had special powers that help them stay connected to each other, as well as reading other people's minds. They're going to need all the powers they have right now, as life is about to get a little strange, courtesy of an alien invasion and the U. S. Army.

Unfortunately, this makes the film seem a little unbalanced. It's almost as if someone has combined a feel good friends type film, such as "Stand By Me", although with a slightly darker side and taken an alien invasion movie, maybe "Independence Day", tweaked it so that not everyone is pulling the same way and stuck them together. Admittedly, part of the source material had this same idea behind it, but the two parts don't always feel quite like the same film. This isn't helped by some of the characters, especially Colonel Curtis, the main army guy, not really crossing over the parts. What you get is not a bad feel good film with aliens added to complicate it, dragged down by a rather limp and badly drawn army based thriller.

The performances of the main actors are nothing to write home about, either. Morgan Freeman, unusually, seems a little out of his depth as Colonel Curtis. He's being asked to play someone who is quite nasty and essentially going a little crazy and he's simply not convincing, as he can't quite shake the kindly old grandfather part of his personality to get into it. Tom Sizemore as Owen, one of his soldiers, does a little better, as he's not called upon to be much more than confused, which with the storyline being as it is couldn't have been too difficult.

The four friends perform adequately enough, but like Sizemore, they're not asked to do a great deal. Damien Lewis as Jonesy is the most involved character and switches between American and English accents quite readily when required to, although his changes in facial expression do get a little tired after a while. Donnie Wahlberg is underused as Duddits, but pulls the role off very well. The real revelations, however, are the actors used to play the five in their younger days. The casting has been done well enough that all the young actors look enough like the older ones that you can identify them immediately as the men they will become. Andrew Robb, especially, as the younger version of Duddits, puts in a very good effort and makes you truly believe in Duddits as a person with special needs, even more so than Donnie Wahlberg as the adult version.

The real stars of this film, as so often seems to be the case these days, are the monsters. Admittedly, there's nothing particularly special in the design of them, with them mostly resembling worms with large teeth and the aliens being based on those seen in the supposed Roswell autopsy and any number of films since. But the way they were generated involved both computer graphics and some puppet work, for when they were engaging with the human cast and it's not at all obvious that there is a difference between the two.

For all the nice visual touches, "Dreamcatcher" fails as both a film as and an adaptation of the Stephen King novel. As a film in its own right, it isn't coherent enough to appeal, and the acting isn't special enough to save it from being anything other than merely standard. It has the feeling of being a couple of ideas stuck together and you can almost see the join sometimes.

As an adaptation, it's a huge disappointment. The part where it starts going very badly wrong is the same part where the two styles are joined together. In the novel, there was a lot more concentrating on the mental state of Colonel Curtis (or Colonel Kurtz, as he was in the novel) which made some of his actions towards the end easier to explain and the film completely misses this part. Given that the film is already a shade over 2 hours long, I would guess this was cut for time, but it does look like a huge omission to someone who has read the novel.

There is still a chance that the extras could save the film, but they once again fail to do so, after again looking to appease the Stephen King fans among film watchers. It is the feature entitled "DreamWriter - An Interview With Stephen King" that first caught my eye and I am sure I would not be the only King fan caught that way. When it comes down to it, though, it's hugely disappointing, with the interview lasting less than 8 minutes and not really containing anything of note. From a personal point of view, it was interesting that King's fears about transferring his books to films run along much the same lines as my own and that those comments should appear on what was an adaptation seriously lacking something.

The "DreamWeavers - The Visual Effects of "Dreamcatcher"" feature is a little better, although it is concerning the more technical side of the film, mostly how they managed to get the monsters concerned to work and how they had them interacting with the cast. It's one of those technical features that appear on a lot of DVDs these days, but which only have limited appeal, unless you're especially into the art of film making.

Surprisingly, the deleted scenes are better than some parts of the extras here. You can see why some of them have been left out; although there is one that I personally feel would have been better left in, as it stays a little more true to the novel. The most fun was the last, which was more out-take than deleted scene and was good for a chuckle. The trailer, as with most trailers, makes the film look a lot better than it is, which is its job after all and the list of cast and crew isn't complete and gives only their roles for this film rather than a more complete filmography as I've seen on other DVDs and is low class enough to fit in with this film.

This simply isn't a DVD worth buying, unless you're enough of a Stephen King fan that you collect DVDs of his work regardless of how good they are. If that's the case, you've probably already got so many bad films in your collection that one more isn't going to matter. If you must have it, pay as little as possible, such as 99 pence from eBay or 74 pence from the Amazon Marketplace. For something this bad, you'd be mad to pay the £5.99 that Play is asking or the £5.97 from Amazon or £5.19 from Sendit.

"Dreamcatcher" has very little merit as a film in its own right, although the first hour isn't really all that bad and not as bad as it gets, and the DVD as a whole is a disappointment to everyone for the poor quality of the extras as well. The above applies even more so for the Stephen King fan, who are led to expect more from both film and extras, but get let down by a poor adaptation and an even poorer interview with the writer himself. They might have been trying to catch a dream, but it turned into a nightmare. 

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