Dreamcatcher (2003)

In June 1999 Stephen King suffered injuries which were not only life-threatening but could have been career-ending.  While on a walk he was struck by a van, the driver of which was distracted by his dog,  causing him to swerve to the side of the road and hit the author.  At first media reports downplayed the injuries but, as time went on, King was forthcoming on what effect it had on his life.  Part of that, due to a broken pelvis, was the inability to sit for long periods of time to write.  

However, a writer must write, and that he did.  His 2001 novel Dreamcatcher was written in longhand, all 500-some pages of it.  It told the story of a different kind of alien invasion, the attempts by a secret U.S. military unit to repel it and a special boy that might just help change the world.  The novel was part body horror and part road trip.  It also featured a number of elements that are typical of King, but also often left out when adapting his books.  Lawrence Kasdan, the writer behind such movies as Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and The Big Chill decided that he would give it a try anyway.

Henry (Thomas Jane), Beaver (Jason Lee), Jonesy (Damien Lewis) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) are lifelong friends bonded by an incident in which they helped save a young mentally disabled kid nicknamed Duddits (Andrew Robb) who was being tormented by bullies.  Eventually they were given certain powers by Duddits, including telepathy and the ability to find lost objects.  Every year they gather for a camping trip, but on this occasion the town nearby is infected by aliens after their ship crashes.  The creatures try to put forward a friendly face, but are in truth parasitic in nature and their means of propagating is not desirable.

One of these creatures, nicknamed Mr. Grey, manages to possess Jonesy and hatches a plan to get out of the quarantine zone set by Col. Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman) in an attempt spread its young through the water supply.  Meanwhile, Curtis has been called to the carpet for using unacceptable means to control the invasion, including the wholesale slaughter of anyone infected.  Despite this he intends to do his job the way he thinks it should be done.  For his part Henry is determined to save Jonesy and the world and partners with a now-dying Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg) to do so. 

The problem with adapting Dreamcatcher is that there is so much going on that it takes a novel to explain it.  We have the usual childhood flashbacks that recall Stand by Me and It, with Derry being the hometown of the main characters.  They have psychic powers and Duddits may or may not be human.  There are secret government organizations and conspiracies, going back to the Shop that features in some of his early novels.  In addition, a key element of the movie is the concept of a "memory warehouse" where Jonesy compartmentalizes parts of his life and his memories of Duddits in order to maintain some kind of control while Mr. Grey is manipulating his body.

Damien Lewis came up with the idea to give Mr. Grey an English accent.  The poblem is, like a number of things in the movie, it turns what should be serious scenes into comedy.  There are comedic elements in the book, and the way the creatures are born from their host is darkly humorous, but the story at the center of it is supposed to be a serious plot about saving humanity.  Kasdan seems to have wanted to fit everything in and, in doing so, made a jumbled and unfocused movie.  Where the book obviously borrows concepts that King has used before, the movie feels almost like a remix album, taking everything audiences liked from the previous movies and trying to present them in a new way.  Despite good performances, decent effects and some parts that work as both horror and action, the whole thing never coalesces into a whole.  It doesn't help that the ending is rushed.  Curtis - Kurtz in the book - has a larger role, as does Duddits, who in the movie seems like a convenient plot device.  

I don't know if a better movie could have been made from Dreamcatcher.  In fact, given all the disparate elements of the story, it would have probably been better left unfilmed, or produced as a modern miniseries where it could have stretched out on a streaming service and not have been hindered by network television censorship like it would have been in 2003.  Lawrence Kasdan, once a hot commodity in Hollywood, began to lose work because of the movie's failure, although it didn't seem to affect the careers of the cast as much.  It also didn't affect King, who was able to get his writing career back on track, and in many ways much stronger than before the accident.  As for Kasdan's film it is justifiably forgotten by most. 

Dreamcatcher (2003)

Time: 134 minutes

Starring: Thomas Jayne, Damien Lewis, Morgan Freeman, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, Donnie Wahlberg

Director: Lawrence Kasdan