by Alan Jones, Starburst, May 2003

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, Tom Sizemore, Donnie Wahlberg, Reece Thompson and Joel Palmer

Producers: Lawrence Kasdan & Charles Oklin

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Screenplay: William Goldman & Lawrence Kasdan, based on Stephen King's book

Music: James Newton Howard

Visual effects: Tim Alexander

Creature design: Jeff Ingle

Duration: 136 mins.

Cert: R US, 15 UK

Released: 21 March US, 25 April UK

From Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan comes a confusing science fiction horror movie geared around the tiniest chills imaginable. Based on Stephen King's worst book, Dreamcatcher is a bloated mélange of the author's over-familiar plot tricks and snowy settings which is made worse by Kasdan's trademark leaden pretentiousness. Not that this has stopped King hyping the most ridiculous alien invasion in history as "the first really successful horror movie made from one of my books in 15 years". Hmm! Didn't he say that about Thinner and Graveyard Shift too? At least they both didn't waste millions of dollars only to end up looking like an overproduced slice of Troma schlock.

The main problem here is simple. King's sprawling novel needed the miniseries format to do justice to its finer details. Instead, massive amounts of information get skimmed over to shoehorn the basic bullet points into a slapdash compendium of Stand By Me, The Tommyknockers and The Shining. The relentlessly dismal result is laughter-indusingly daft and lacks any stability in tone, pacing or style. Add the ludicrous turd-with-teeth monsters and a career worst performance by Morgan Freeman as a grumpy military ET hunter and you have a stilted shocker that barely catches credibility let alone our worst dreams.

Four best friends -- Henry (Thomas Jane), Beaver (Jason Lee), Jonesy (Damian Lewis), and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) -- meet up for their annual winter hunting trip at an isolated New England cabin and end up fighting an alien foe that gestates in the stomachs of those stricken with a red skin virus. (The disease is called The Ripley after Alien, a typical example of the cynical way King tries to induce fright by proxy). The friends were granted telepathic powers after they rescued their retarded buddy Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg) from school bullies 20 years before, but it's their leukemia-suffering mate who holds the prophetic key to surviving being gored by the shape-shifting visitors.

Captain Underhill (Tom Sizemore) is the government agent who takes control of the "quarantine" situation along with hero Henry when it becomes clear Colonel Kurtz (Morgan Freeman) is putting innocent people at risk to halt the deadly intergalactic infection.

That synopsis actually makes more sense than the script, which teeters from one half-baked idea about personality changes (alien-possessed Lewis's schizoid ranting is so badly presented and misconceived) to lumbering anticlimactic death scenes involving space slime. In fairness Dreamcatcher does begin with an eerie sense of foreboding but all that suspenseful menace evaporates as Kasdan rapidly loses tight grip on the cloudy narrative and the depressing burp and fart jokes announce the arrival of the s**t-weevil creatures. I lost the will to live when Beaver's desperation for a toothpick seals his toilet-sitting fate. Who would have believed cleaning your teeth would be more important than ensuring a flesh-hungry mini-Anaconda remains trapped? Absolutely no one! It's a mystery to why normally sensible scriptwriter William (Misery) Goldman thought he could get away with that. ...

Dreamcatcher is Kasdan's first ever horror movie. Based on this incoherent shambles, it's also bound to be his last.

Caption: A pleasant camping trip becomes a battle for survival.

Caption: Never flag down a passing car if you're in a Stephen King movie.

Caption: You won't believe your eyes ... or how poor this film is.