I enjoyed this book by Stephen King and would have been pleased if it had never been made into a movie - - now that I have seen the Goldman (screenwriter) & Kasdan (director - co-writer) adaptation on DVD this Labor Day Weekend 2007 I'm quite sure that a major studio mega-budget can't fix what your imagination can. My advice is read the book and then pick a title that's not related to a prior media project (e.g. PAN'S_LABYRINTH of last year). The set-up for DREAMCATCHER (novel and movie) is classic Stephen King as far as defeating evil that has possessed and contaminated the community. The song that is vintage early Baby Boomer ("Blue Bayou" / Roy Orbison) that somehow is a "stuck in the mind" common denominator DOESN'T quite work as far as its origin and various covers fitting the 20 years prior to 2003 or whatever the year of the film's time setting. What goes extremely haywire in this action film replete with gross-out sh*t-weasels (King's way of scaring the readers way out of our comfort zones) is the not-very convincing military scenes that reminded me way, way too much of MEN_IN_BLACK as far as super-villain aliens who can be wiped out with only a barely detectable sense of "shoot first, ask questions later" and no unintended consequences to follow. The book is much more frightening as far as the way that Jonesy is held prisoner in his Warehouse of Memories and he figures out ways to entice Mr. Gray to overplay "his hand" and plan for world domination. The DVD extra of having Stephen King make a kind of cameo amongst the Special Feature choices was great for fans like me but I still have trouble rating this horror-action film more than a 7 in IMDb's rating system. I would rate it a R-16 and not just a PG-13 if I was running the MPAA system. Kids might inadvertently learn not to drive fast through snowy roads (even if you are seat-belted) as some of the characters learn, crashing with surprisingly minor injuries.
Review of Dreamcatcher
