WARNING - "Dreamcatcher" is extremely awful !

[Fenros]

This movie is awful!

It is one of the most cinematically awful things I've seen in quite a while. I mean really really bad.

The only cool thing is I got to see "Last Flight of the Osiris" Animatrix short film before the movie.

The first 20 minutes seem pretty straight. Its about the time when the main characters get to their cabin in the woods where it starts to just go bonkers.

If you're going into this film ready to see a serious sci-fi/thriller , you're going to walk out (either at the end credits if you have the stamina or some where about the hour and forty five minute mark) pulling your hair and screaming as to why you watched it and how it got made.

However, if you want to go in and pretend its not a serious thriller and instead pretend its a spoof movie on bad sci-fi films (like the way Scary Movie is to horror/slasher flicks and Austin Powers is to Bond movies) then may actually walk out having lots of fun in a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 kind of way.

Anyways, I'm just trying to warn you now.

Disclaimer: The above is just my opinion....but as I looked around the theatre at the audience, we seemed to be all sharing the same opinion.

If you really want to see "Last Flight of the Osiris" maybe you should wait till the collected Animatrix DVD comes out in June sometime rather than spend money to the profit of "Dreamcatcher". Oh and you might not be able to do the ticket refund after seeing the Animatrix because most theatres (including the one I went to) anticipated this and have a sign that says that they will not refund for "Dreamcatcher".

 

[Dinkeldog]

One of the movie reviewers in Chicago I tend to agree with said it was a great movie. He also said he disagreed with almost every other reviewer at the screening.

 

[Dreeble]

Thumbs Up

Heya:

I enjoyed it for several reasons:

1) Morgan Freeman is awesome. The amount of slack I'll serrate if he's in a movie is huge.
2) Tom Sizemore is cool. Liked him ever since Heat.
3) I read the book recently and it was kind of fun seeing how accurate (or not) the movie was. As mentioned, the beginning was relatively faithful. The ending was completely not from the book. Spoilers in a bit.
4) Some good special effects, good scenery, a hint of the kind of dialog Stephen King writes, etc.

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a bit

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Spoilers

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Seriously, spoilers, kind of my interpretation of stuff, tho, so maybe not so spoilerish

...

From reading the book, the "aliens" consisted of the red Ripley virus and the weasels that sometimes grew in people who inhaled the virus. There were no "greys", those were just images created by the virus, which wasn't intelligent, necessarily, just striving to survive. Jonesy was influenced by the Ripley, sure, but "Mr. Grey" didn't possess him, that was Jonesy's dark side or something (maybe he had a deathwise, too, or split personality, something like that). And Duddits, while special, was a human. Oh, yeah, when "Mr. Grey" killed people, he didn't morph into something weird, from what I remember, he made them kill themselves.

Take care,
Dreeble

 

[dravot]

I haven't seen it yet, but the local paper (Philadelphia Inquirer) gave it 3 out of 4 stars, so I was a bit surprised to hear you pan it so badly.

That said, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and the overall sense from the critics is that it's a pretty horrible film

I guess I'll wait for it to hit cable

 

[Tempuswolf]

Fenros, I don't get your criticism. I very much enjoyed the beginning, mostly because it was quite unexpected. I knew I was going to see an alien invasion movie and the fact that protagonists were what they were was just too cool. I also like the way the movie revealed their nature slowly, through things like the cabin scene which you hated. It's so rare that I see a genre movie that isn't a hackneyed, CGIed-out-the-watusi rehash of another better movie made thirty or fifty years ago. Some of the plot elements are a bit too (Stephen) Kingish but overall I highly recommend the movie.

4 out of 5 stars.

 

[Fenros]

Heh heh, okay guys....I'll elaborate more on why I thought the movie was awful. Of course, keep in mind that again...its just my opinion. I'm glad some of you were able to enjoy it.


While I talk about what made the movie awful to me, I'll have to actually talk about the movie.

so here's the MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!-----------------------

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Tempuswolf, I apologize if I gave the wrong impression that the film went really south as soon as the cabin sequence started. It did and it didn't. I just meant, that small signs of poor movie making started to appear there first. The whole scene when the stranger who got lost in the woods was in the bathroom was actually excellent. Appropriately gross. I liked that.

Anyways, let's start my list of elements that I found to be poor movie making.


Okay, where do I begin.
Jonesy's Memory Vault :Whoa....surreal. I mean, talk about breaking the reality barrier. That kind of cinematic choice of representing a person's mind is usual kept within the realms of comedy or abstract artsy films. Like Terry Gilliam stuff or something. Or cartoons.

Now, the first time it appears (in the cabin dinner table discussion), its not so glaring. I was like...."okay...that's different" but why the visual representation? For a serious sci-fi film, I would've gone with him just talking about it. Not actually showing it.

Then you realize later why it needs visual representation. The director needed a backdrop in which to act out the struggle between the Grey and Jonesy. But I feel that decision to represent it that way was wrong. Totally takes me out of the genre. I would've liked a different, more realistic way of showing the struggle in his mind.

One may argue that keeping certain cinematic styles (like the abstract representation of Jonsey's mind) only in abstract films or comedy is creative stagnation. Artists are suppose to come up with new ways to use new storytelling techniques right? Well, yes...I agree. But somethings I feel are harder to crossover correctly. This is one of them.

Sudden Character changes and representation : What's up with Henry? I mean, he leaves his friend with the woman in the road, then hikes it back to the cabin. Now....he has no idea there's an alien landing. He doesn't even know if aliens exist. Yet, as soon as he senses Jonsey riding down the road on the snowmobile, he feels its not really Jonesy. Well okay, maybe there's enough weird vibes going on to put him off. So okay, he ducks to the side of the road and hides. But what if it was just another hunter travelling back to town for groceries? He would've lost his chance to ask for help.

Oh well, no biggie. Let's move on. He goes back to the cabin and lights it up. Now he knows something is horribly wrong. Then he leaves on skis. But does he go back to his friend in the woods with the strange woman? No, he just goes off.

Here's the weirdest part for me. He accidently runs into the soldier alien containment group. Then he all of sudden becomes the creepy stalker element outside the Freeman's window. When did he go from running scared and confused to hard and take charge? Like he's the sudden man with the plan. We didn't even have a scene where he asks anyone what the heck is really going on.

The Grey's Voice : Why is it a British parody voice when the Grey talks from Jonesy's mouth? I'm sure there's some explanation to it. Like, its dug up from one of Jonesy's memory. But since they don't explain that....we don't know. And even IF...IF they did explain that....why in the world would you want his voice to be comedic? That totally ruins the mood and validity of the Grey as a serious villain.



Silly Movie shots : certain styles of shots are used for certain genres of movies. Slow motion entrance is for John Woo guys entering the scene. Bullet-time is for Matrix. Cutting to the X-ray of a man's body to show his bones being broken is Hong Kong Action. Etc, etc.

The movie can't decide what style it wants. Certainly not realistic. I mean, the zoom in on Freeman's silver .45 as we see through the metal to show the hidden transmitter.....OMG! What the heck? Its like out of some saturday morning cartoon or something.

There are so many others too. I just can't name the all. They don't all have to do with camera shots. Some are just plain silly because of dialogue or what the character's are doing. I wish I can remember them all. Then again. Maybe I don't.



Showdown between Sizemore and Freeman : Man, I love these two actors. But what's with their story arc? Its just to blaze each other down in the end in some silly duel? Sizemore's character is just there to drive Henry and Duditz to the water plant? Why does he just stand there when the Freeman's helicopter makes it's strafing run?

Duditz : (I might've spelled that wrong) So the best pals make friends with a retarded kid with mental powers. Its a little unclear as to why Duditz isn't in their circle of friends more. I mean, I kind of figure it out later. I guess because he's got Lukemia. But when Henry and Sizemore's character go to pick him up, the mom tells Henry as if it's the first time he's hearing of it. Which would lead me to think that he didn't know. Which also leads me to think.....why if they have this get together at the cabin to celebrate their friendship, why isnt Duditz there?

Why is an alien being with from another world with supreme mental powers laying low in the body of a retarded child in some American family?

Don't tell me the book was different and made more sense. That may be so. But I'm talking about the movie only.

Anyways, that's about all I can remember for now. I hope that sheds some light as to why I think this movie is bad.

There are many other reasons that probably envolve the intricate relationship with editing, plot, dialogue, and other factors. But I don't think I'm good enough to describe it all. You just gotta trust me when I say, "its bad". Or trust that I truly believe it if not you anyone else. But I know others did. The WHOLE audience at my screening was in pain.

 

[Argus Decimus Mokira]

Hey

How the hell did you know you guys know you were going into an alien invasion movie? The trailer consists of animals acting weird and Jason Leigh screenshots, both of which end 15 minutes into the movie. I thank the cinema gods that i caught this POS at a matinee ... summing up my complaints in one sentence "I have never seen a movie so mis-represented by the trailer."

All IMO
-Matt

PS Aside from digital boobies, Flight of the Osiris was less than interesting ... maybe if it was an improvement over FF:tSW I would have been impressed, but it dodn't.

 

[Shadowdancer]

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!-----------------------

What's up with Henry? I mean, he leaves his friend with the woman in the road, then hikes it back to the cabin. Now....he has no idea there's an alien landing. He doesn't even know if aliens exist. Yet, as soon as he senses Jonsey riding down the road on the snowmobile, he feels its not really Jonesy. Well okay, maybe there's enough weird vibes going on to put him off. So okay, he ducks to the side of the road and hides. But what if it was just another hunter travelling back to town for groceries? He would've lost his chance to ask for help.[/B]

This was explained in the movie, if you were paying attention. Jonsey -- the real Jonsey, not Mr. Grey -- warned Henry telepathecially that something was wrong. Then Henry heard the Mr. Grey voice inside his head. He got suspicious, then hid.

While I agree with you, Fenros, that this movie was pretty crappy, I disagree with a couple of your complaints. Such as the visual representation of Jonsey's memory - I thought that was an interesting addition to the movie. And just because a certain style of camera shot or effect is used primarily in one genre or type of movie, that's no reason it can't be used in other movies. I didn't find the tracking device shot of the gun's interior to be distracting or out of place. In fact, if it had shown more innovation like this, I might've liked it more. But probably not.

Both me and my wife had a hard time staying awake for the last hour of this movie. It was very predictable, very cliched, and very poorly done. I was very disappointed, and certainly wished I hadn't wasted any money on it. The problems with Mr. Grey hiding inside Jonsey, and the fact that Duddits was actually an alien, raised too many questions which weren't answered. And as Fenros already said, the Duddits' lukemia was something the other characters should have known about beforehand, but apparently didn't.

And I didn't think the flashback sequences were handled very well. They in and of themselves were done well, they just detracted from the story's development. Maybe if they were broken up into shorter sequences, revealed little by little, they would have been more effective, I dunno.

 

[Neowolf]

Re: Thumbs Up

From reading the book, the "aliens" consisted of the red Ripley virus and the weasels that sometimes grew in people who inhaled the virus. There were no "greys", those were just images created by the virus, which wasn't intelligent, necessarily, just striving to survive. Jonesy was influenced by the Ripley, sure, but "Mr. Grey" didn't possess him, that was Jonesy's dark side or something (maybe he had a deathwise, too, or split personality, something like that). And Duddits, while special, was a human. Oh, yeah, when "Mr. Grey" killed people, he didn't morph into something weird, from what I remember, he made them kill themselves.

Just out of curiosity, what in the book leads you to believe Duddits was human? This very well could have been a change between the book and movie, but in the film all doubt as to his species is eradicated at the end, when he...
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...transforms into a huge (obviously alien) entity in the final battle with Mr. Grey.

 

[Samothdm]

I have to agree with Fenros that I thought the movie was terrible. So did all seven of the friends that went with me. But, for me, it was just more of a story and direction problem versus the specifics that Fenros mentioned.

Spoiler alert! and all that. . .

Jonesy's Memory Vault :Whoa....surreal. I mean, talk about breaking the reality barrier. That kind of cinematic choice of representing a person's mind is usual kept within the realms of comedy or abstract artsy films. Like Terry Gilliam stuff or something. Or cartoons.

Nah, this didn't bother me at all. It kind of threw me for a second until I figured out what they were doing, but overall it didn't make the movie horrible for me.

but why the visual representation? For a serious sci-fi film, I would've gone with him just talking about it. Not actually showing it.

But, seriously, why not do it visually? It was kind of different. If he's just going to talk about it, then why mention it at all?

Sudden Character changes and representation : What's up with Henry? I mean, he leaves his friend with the woman in the road, then hikes it back to the cabin. Now....he has no idea there's an alien landing. He doesn't even know if aliens exist. Yet, as soon as he senses Jonsey riding down the road on the snowmobile, he feels its not really Jonesy. Well okay, maybe there's enough weird vibes going on to put him off. So okay, he ducks to the side of the road and hides. But what if it was just another hunter travelling back to town for groceries? He would've lost his chance to ask for help.

I think somebody else mentioned this, but they made it pretty clear through some of the flashback scenes that the four main characters had some kind of telepathy. Jonesy, probably unconsciously, warned Henry that he wasn't himself. Or else Henry was able to sense it. That's why Henry started shouting "Jonesy! Thank God!" or whatever before he even couldn't known that it was Jonesey - he sensed him, and then later sensed that he was "not himself".

Oh well, no biggie. Let's move on. He goes back to the cabin and lights it up. Now he knows something is horribly wrong. Then he leaves on skis. But does he go back to his friend in the woods with the strange woman? No, he just goes off.

They also established that it was I think 9 miles from the cabin to where Pete was. Maybe not quite that far, but very far. I think it's reasonable to assume that he was on his way back to Pete (using the skis) but got intercepted by the military people. You don't really know that he wasn't heading back to Pete.

The Grey's Voice : Why is it a British parody voice when the Grey talks from Jonesy's mouth? I'm sure there's some explanation to it. Like, its dug up from one of Jonesy's memory. But since they don't explain that....we don't know. And even IF...IF they did explain that....why in the world would you want his voice to be comedic? That totally ruins the mood and validity of the Grey as a serious villain.

I agreed wholeheartedly with this. I thought it was really stupid and had no set-up for why he would do that. But, as Eddie Izzard would say, Americans always make their villains have English accents. Look at the Imperials in "Star Wars".

I mean, the zoom in on Freeman's silver .45 as we see through the metal to show the hidden transmitter.....OMG! What the heck? Its like out of some saturday morning cartoon or something.

That took me off guard when it happened, but didn't really bother me all that much. A little more consistency would've been nice, but again, wasn't really what made the movie horrible.

Showdown between Sizemore and Freeman : Man, I love these two actors. But what's with their story arc? Its just to blaze each other down in the end in some silly duel? Sizemore's character is just there to drive Henry and Duditz to the water plant? Why does he just stand there when the Freeman's helicopter makes it's strafing run?

I agree here, too. Sizemore was totally under-utilized, and I really like him as an actor. I have no idea why he just stood there and waited for Morgan Freeman to completely turn all the way around and shoot him again. We were all complaining about that. Bad writing. And, bad direction for not taking that out or changing it. And, I'd argue that Freeman and Sizemore are actors of enough quality and reputation that they could've said to the Director, "That's complete BS! My character wouldn't do that."

Duditz : (I might've spelled that wrong) So the best pals make friends with a retarded kid with mental powers. Its a little unclear as to why Duditz isn't in their circle of friends more. I mean, I kind of figure it out later. I guess because he's got Lukemia. But when Henry and Sizemore's character go to pick him up, the mom tells Henry as if it's the first time he's hearing of it. Which would lead me to think that he didn't know. Which also leads me to think.....why if they have this get together at the cabin to celebrate their friendship, why isnt Duditz there?

That didn't bother me that much, either. People just naturally drift apart as they grow older. And, he was different enough that it makes it that much easier for the other guys not to be able to find that much in common with him. It sucks, but that's just how people are.

Why is an alien being with from another world with supreme mental powers laying low in the body of a retarded child in some American family?

I think that the alien picked a "host" and just out of sheer bad luck picked Duditz. I figured that once a host is chosen, it can't be changed (at least for that particular species of alien).

Don't tell me the book was different and made more sense. That may be so. But I'm talking about the movie only.

I agree with this sentiment completely. That's why I completely disagree with another poster in another thread about LOTR: TTT. He complained that it was as good as FOTR because it was too different from the book. So what? Evaluate it as a movie, not as a direct correlation to the book.

In general, I actually thought that the movie was pretty scary and suspenseful until the scenes with the eel-things and seeing Mr. Grey and all that. It's like any other horror film - once they show the monser, it's usually not very scary any more, because no matter how scary they try to make it seem, it's never as scary as I've imagined it in my own mind.

I think that the dialogue was pretty poor, and I thought that Morgan Freeman's and Tom Sizemore's characters were shallow and undeveloped. Not written well at all.

And the whole stepping on the little eel guy before he goes into the water supply, that whole scene was just so cliche. Even the battle beforehand. I was never really scared that the bad guy would (or even could) win. Duditz revealing himself to be a weird alien guy was not a surprise and just kind of goofy.

I just don't know how to explain it, but I thought it was terrible. Then again, just to be fair, the only Stephen King movies I've really liked are the more mainstream ones like "Stand by Me" and "Green Mile".