Harefooted Halloween: Dreamcatcher

*There are going to be some minor spoilers in this one because it’s impossible to talk about otherwise*

What I Liked: Morgan Freeman (The Muppets Mayhem) plays a bad guy which you almost never see.  He can be an intense actor so combining that with his signature calming almighty voice used as a weapon is effective.  Here he plays a colonel who has the resources of the US government at his disposal to kick alien ass which he’s been doing for twenty five years under the radar.  He’s hellbent on destroying every last one that has come to Earth so he’s kinda edgy.  Freeman’s natural command of every scene he’s in works well for this character and makes him a bit scary because you automatically want to trust he knows what he’s doing but really he’s unpredictable.  There are a couple of speeches about how the aliens knocked on the wrong fucking door which are delivered perfectly.  Who knew Freeman is so good at playing a maniacal bastard?

What I Didn’t Like: Pretty much everything else.

Overall Impressions: Back when this came out I remember seeing the advertising and not understanding anything about what was shown.  The trailer, the poster, the title, it was all so cryptic.  Honestly, it didn’t even register with me that this is an alien invasion picture.  They do tell you briefly in the trailer but if you blink you miss it.  So for twenty years I didn’t know what to expect.  The two things I did know are that it’s Stephen King related and it has a terrible reputation.  And yea, I can mostly see why.

While I haven’t read the book I’m guessing this wasn’t adapted very well, which is common for King works.  There’s too much story and too many characters for a single film.  A miniseries or TV show would’ve worked better.  Even still the basic premise comes across as a weaker version of IT.  A group of teenage friends from Derry, Maine with telepathy get together later as adults to fight an evil monster using said abilities.  They gained their powers as adolescents from an autistic kid (ok, technically not autistic but that’s how it’s presented for nearly the whole runtime) who knew the world would be in danger one day (twenty goddamn years later).  Now they’re trapped in the snowy wilderness and need to figure out what in the hell’s going on and fight numerous enemies and learn to use their superpowers in the correct way to overcome the situation.  There’s also Morgan Freeman and his covert alien hunting arm of the military who doesn’t care how many innocent people have to die as long as he eradicates the invaders but at the same time he’s being pushed out by his superiors and alright that’s enough already.  There’s a lot of backstory and several plots happening at once and multiple conflicts and it’s all too much.

Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan (French Kiss) actually does a decent job of keeping all this shit comprehensible somehow.  But there are still times when things don’t make much sense or there’s confusion over how the aliens operate or why they want to take over Earth and we find out they can hijack people’s bodies The Thing style which makes you wonder why they don’t do that more and put themselves in greater positions of power (they’ve been at this for who knows how many decades) and so on.  The filmmakers either needed to streamline the plot or go all in as a multi-part event.  As is it feels rushed so I’m assuming a lot was cut from King’s novel.  On top of this there are simply some strange decisions like the main alien villain randomly using a British accent or when an alien gestates inside a human they heinously burp and fart uncontrollably.

On the technical side there are plenty of issues as well.  The performances are a mixed bag with the actors being fine in one scene but then suddenly awful in the next.  Sometimes it’s the actor’s fault and sometimes it’s the director's fault where they use a weird angle or don’t cut away when they should.  The editing can be a bit obnoxious, especially during the action scenes.  The alien design are these kinda generic big slimy creatures with lots of teeth.  And lastly the effects.  Oh man, not only does the CGI not hold up but the green screening looks bad too.  Plus some of the sound effects are stock shit that tend to lend a cheap feel.

Look, with all of that said this picture isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be honestly.  It’s pretty followable with at least one standout performance.  It’s didn’t really grab me but if alien invasion movies are in your wheelhouse or if you’re a big Stephen King fan then you might get a kick out of it.

And I have to admit that after watching so many Stephen King adaptations for so many years at this point there’s something comforting about them.  Even though Dreamcatcher was new to me I could recognize his style immediately in the characters, plot devices, location and general spirit.  In that sense it’s like hanging out with an old friend.  So while I can’t say this is a particularly good film it’s still familiar in an ephemeral way, like a dream.