Released 25 April -- Cert. 15

Hello, April 2003

Sweet dreams are not made of this. Lawrence Kasdan's adaptation of the chilling novel by Stephen King is a car-crash of a movie. As much as you want to turn away, you can't help but stare at the cinema disaster unfolding before you.

Years after they saved a mentally retarded child from a gang of bullies, fortysomething friends Henry (Thomas Jane), Joe (Jason Lee), Gary (Damian Lewis) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) reunite for a hunting expedition deep in the woods of Maine.

The weekend then takes a sinister turn with the arrival of a malevolent alien force capable of taking control of human beings.

The military, led by deranged Colonel Curtis (Morgan Freeman), try desperately to take charge of the situation.

Dreamcatcher is rotten to the core. Screenwriter William Goldman has eviscerated King's source novel, reducing a compelling spooky thriller to an excruciating monster movie -- complete with aliens that explode out of the bottoms of the infected human hosts.

Dialogue is almost as laughable as Freeman's eyebrows and the performances are so flat, you wonder whether the actors really have been possessed by aliens.

Caption: Jason Lee and Damian Lewis star in this hammy Stephen King adaptation, about an alien invasion deep in the woods of Maine, which is so bad it's almost good.