2014 is most certainly one of Morgan Freeman’s busier years. Between playing a wise sage in The LEGO Movie, a concerned technophobe in Transcendence, a freelance exposition factory in Lucy (call it “explosition”), and this weekend’s lighthearted Dolphin Tale 2, the 77-year-old class-act actor has been busier than ever. And even when he’s in the occasional stinker (Transcendence wasn’t too warmly regarded by many; it enjoys a mere 19% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes), it’s usually a pleasure to see him performing and, more importantly, hear his mellifluous and God-like voice dictating the nature of the world.
Back in 2003, however, Morgan Freeman co-starred in (with a large supporting cast) what can easily be considered the biggest stinker of his career: The hugely ambitious and undeniably dumb Dreamcatcher, based on a novel by Stephen King and directed by, of all people, Lawrence Kasdan. We here at CraveOnline are always interested in the extremes of cinema, often seeking not just good movies, but great ones. And, just as passionately, we want to – want to – seek out and expose the very bottom of the barrel. A great film can move you. A truly terrible film… well, that can be cathartic.
So I ask: Is Dreamcatcher the Worst Movie Ever? Let’s delve a bit into that.
If you are unfamiliar with Dreamcatcher, it is, as I have said, based on a novel by Stephen King, who is usually at least 80 – 85% reliable when it comes to his film adaptations. King supposedly wrote the novel when he was recovering from a rather terrible traffic accident, and some have proposed that the painkillers he was taking are more responsible for the resulting scattered mess than King himself was.
THE EVIDENCE AGAINST:
Dreamcatcher is all over the place. Running a bloated and bulbous 134 minutes, the film incorporates just about every usual interest and passing whim that King managed to concoct: King’s trademarked Childhood Friends™, psychic powers, metaphorical libraries (?), bodily possession, alien invasion, disgusting fecal imagery, a military attack, and a foulmouthed Morgan Freeman sporting a pair of bushy eyebrows that would make Peter Gallagher cry. Oh yes, and I must not forget the mentally disabled magic boy who somehow managed (it is never really explained) to give the childhood friends their psychic powers. Buckle in, because Dreamcatcher is a roller coaster of dumb.
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The story centers on a quartet of adult friends (Thomas Jane, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee, and Damian Lewis) who gather in a remote cabin annually to banter, bond, and remember their mutual best friend Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg) the retarded boy who imbued them all with strange abilities when they were kids. The four of them can kind of read each other’s thoughts, but also do small tasks like locate lost keys. The powers are never really spelled out. While on their retreat, the quartet encounter a sick man who is impregnated with an alien embryo. You read that right. The aliens in this film reproduce in the most disgusting way imaginable. You eat their eggs, they gestate in your colon, and exit your body in a way you don’t want to think about.
These aliens are part of a psychic invasion force. One of the aliens possesses Damian Lewis, which, bafflingly, gives him a British accent (the alien even calls people “guvna!”). Lewis’s struggle to fight the alien presence in his brain is represented by a metaphorical chase through his memories, seen as a vast library. In the book, these abstract scenes may have played better. Here, it’s a strange detail in a sea of strange details.
Related: ‘Lucy’ Review: The Mind Boggles
Eventually, Thomas Jane must track down the adult Duddits and have him do battle with evil aliens. Oh yes, and let’s not forget Morgan Freeman, who sadly reads some really awful dialogue, trying to bring a shred of credibility to a cartoonishly evil army general who leads an airstrike on a crashed alien spacecraft.
There are two kinds of awful films: There are films that are bad because the filmmakers are incompetent and untalented, and there are failed experiments by ambitious and talented people who are trying to bring us something new. Dreamcatcher is the latter. In addition to a devoted and talented cast, this film was written by Hollywood stalwart William Goldman, based on the King book, and directed by Kasdan, who is usually so compelling. I can’t imagine what the filmmakers were thinking. If you’re going to make a film about adult male camaraderie, why make it an oddball epic with psychic aliens from space, superpowered special needs kids, and psychic libraries?
Related: Kings of Horror Presents: ‘Dreamcatcher’
There is a scene in Dreamcatcher wherein Jason Lee’s character – named Beaver of all things – has trapped one of the anal aliens (nicknamed “Shitweasels”) inside a toilet, sitting on the lid to prevent its escape. Stressed out, he reaches to the floor to find a toothpick to chew on (his one salve). He is unable to reach it, unable to get off of the toilet. According to an interview with Stephen King, this scene is the centerpiece of the film. King said that he sought an intimate setting for his novel. The bedroom, he felt, had already been pretty thoroughly explored, so why not take it into the bathroom? Why not have a stressful, fearful moment when you just can’t get off the toilet? In the vast scope of universal human fears, I think not being able to get off of a toilet ranks pretty low.
I’m still not sure how dreamcatchers factor into all this.
THE VERDICT:
Dreamcatcher is odd, gross, long, and undeniably stupid, but at the end of the day, it’s really, really hard not to be incredulously entertained. Watching every single bad idea actually play itself out in Dreamcatcher is like a spectacular slow-motion explosion. There is too much crazy, to much weird, and too much HFS to impugn the film too deeply. Indeed, Dreamcatcher can’t be considered one of the worst films of all time because it’s too busy being one of the most wondrously insane.
This is a gigantic, slick, great-looking, well-made Hollywood film, directed by an established talent, that somehow made it through hundreds of layers of studio approval, and still looks like a blender full of outrageous, non-working. It feels like four films squished together, all filtered through an uncomfortable veneer of Stephen King’s unadulterated and aplomb-free ramblings. And there’s something awesome about that. A creative failure is always going to be more interesting than a mediocre success. I watch Dreamcatcher, and I don’t feel pain or dismay. Indeed, I feel an odd form of exhilaration. Bad, offensive, and caustic is one thing. Bad, dumb, and demented is something else entirely.
THE SENTENCE (TO BE CARRIED OUT IMMEDIATELY):
Dreamcatcher will be sentenced to 11 years of obscurity, followed by time off for cult behavior.
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly Trolling articles here on Crave, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
