Bullet Points: Dreamcatcher

I recently made it through the Stephen King novel Dreamcatcher. It took quite some effort as it was crazy long and my two previous reads were shorter books and this King jam felt like it would never end. If you’ve never read a Stephen King novel then you may not understand that the way that he writes and the way that many of his books are translated to film are very, very different. That is the case with most writers, I suppose, but I think that Stephen King’s brand of horror-like creepiness can sometimes get very lost when directors try to film his stories. Very few of his books have actually made for really good movies. Of course The Shining (which is extremely different from the book), Carrie, and a handful of others have done well, but for the majority of his adaptations, they have not met with much applause.

That is where I was coming from when I put in the Lawrence Kasdan directed Dreamcatcher the other day. The cast is phenomenal from the standpoint of an action fan, like myself. Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Morgan Freeman, Timothy Olyphant, Tom Sizemore and Jason Lee play the major characters. And as I already mentioned Lawrence Kasdan directed it so you should have been a home run. The fact that the movie was an utter disappointment at the box office should come as no surprise to fans of the book. Like many of King’s novels, Dreamcatcher is a really tough piece to adapt into a two hour film. If anything, a 10 episode run would be perfect to tell the entire story. It’s a shame that with so many talented actors they still couldn’t put together something that wasn’t a steaming pile of crap.

Synopsis: Four friends who share something of a mental bond between them all, are thrust into the middle of an alien invasion during their annual camping trip in the forests of Maine. A special Black Ops group pulls into town in order to take out the menace before it can reach the inhabited areas but it may already be too late.

• Write what you know: That is some of the best and easiest advice for anyone who wants to make a career in writing. Stephen King places most of his stories near his home in New England, and almost all of his books take place in the state of Maine, where he lives. It makes sense that he would keep writing about this area. I try to do the same thing. That’s why you’ll notice that I write about ninjas, big-breasted women, and drinking beer so much.
• Netflix Series: It will probably never happen but I would love for Netflix or Amazon to give Stephen King a series in which he could tell a different tale during each of his shows 10 episode seasons. King already has overlap in a lot of his books; the cities that characters are from, the villains that reappear, and it would be a fun way to bring in his amazing Dark Tower Series that he has spent his entire life writing. I know they’re making a movie based on the first book but I can’t say that I’m all that excited about the film based on the pictures released.

• We are Weird: It’s hard to say if this is Stephen King’s weirdest novel to be adapted to film. I know it’s not the strangest story he’s written but the way that it comes off on screen for the first hour or so is weirdly great. The book is strange, for sure, but the movie is in such a rush to fit in as much story as possible that things happen at breakneck speeds and the viewer is given very little time to catch their breath.

• Red: Morgan Freeman’s hair and eyebrows deserve some sort of award for just how glorious they are. I was a bit pissed that they changed the name of his character from Colonel Kurtz to Colonel Curtis so people wouldn’t be confused with the Apocalypse Now reference but it makes no sense because King wrote it as a reference to the classic Vietnam movie. Either way, Freeman plays Kurtz/Curtis brilliantly even though the character is far more intimidating and badass in the book than he ever appears on screen.
• Shaken or Stirred: Recently there has been rumblings that Daniel Craig may be hanging up his 007 moniker with the potential of Homeland star Damian Lewis getting a shot. I guess that is why I thought it was so funny when Timothy Olyphant’s character told Lewis that “you sound like one of those James Bonds”. Lewis’ character wasn’t supposed to be British but after his character’s body is “hijacked” by an alien the call Mr. Grey, he starts speaking in a British accent. I told you it was weird.
• Book to Film action: One of the most important scenes in the book is when Kurtz’s men have many of the locals rounded up and are about to execute them but not before Henry (played by Tom Jane in the film) incites a mini-revolution and causes a crazy gun battle and fires/explosions to happen. That seems like a scene that would have been perfect for the movie but they decided to go in a different direction. It may have been because of budgetary reasons but the resulting scene in the movie made very little sense and it was a huge missed opportunity to add some life into the second half of the film.
• Where’s Ripley: The Ripley Virus, named after “that broad from the Aliens flicks”, is in both the book and the movie but the book form gives the people who are infected a touch of telepathy. It’s much easier to show the effect of the telepathy in the book, I guess, given the constraints of time in the film industry. But the only characters in the movie that use any sort of telepathic powers are the four buddies from Maine.
• I Duddits: I was hoping that I could write this review without bringing up just how badly they treated the character of Duddits in the film but I just couldn’t do it. The book clearly says that Duddits has Downs Syndrome. I don’t know if people in Hollywood are scared to have an actor with Downs or what but they cast Duddits with an actor who doesn’t have Downs and they essentially never admit that he is anything other than an alien. Yes, an alien. The amazing Duddits that was written in the novel was now replaced with some shitty plot device alien bullcrap. It was the final straw that broke my proverbial camel’s back.
• Oh Wait, one more: Just when I thought that this movie failed as much as it possibly could, the end came. The end of the movie, I mean. Instead of another telepathic battle between the surviving members of the Maine friends, Duddits, and Mr. Grey, we instead got Duddits turning into some sort of scorpion-tailed alien and killing Mr. Grey. Kiss my bender, it was bad!

You made it this far, why not read these extra Bullet Points?

• Stephen King sold the rights for $1.

• The character Duddits is played by none other than Donnie Wahlberg.
• Morgan Freeman’s eyebrows were made from real unicorn hair.
• If you pause the movie at just the right time you can see Tom Sizemore doing a line of coke off of Morgan Freeman’s flattop.
• Two of those previous bullet points are not real.

The Verdict: Guess what? I didn’t like the movie. I enjoyed the hell out of the book but the movie is in such a rush to get to the end that they missed about 88% of the story and just gave us the cliff notes. The first half of the movie is decent. It does an okay job of introducing some of the characters and even flashes back to some of their childhood days. The second half, though, is so bad that it made me sick to my stomach. If you are a fan of Stephen King’s work and you’d like to hear a really weird and crazy story about alien invasions, viral infections, telepathy, the bonds shared by childhood friends, and some really unique cursing then you should totally read the book. Skip the movie, it’ll only confuse you.