Charger Arts & Entertainment

Stephen King’s back at the box office with Dreamcatcher

Allison Coffey, Charger Staff

Stephen King is a favorite author of many. His books take you to another world of fear and suspense. Many of his books, being as popular as they are, have been turned into movies (lucky for the people too lazy to pick up a book), the latest being Dreamcatcher.

Dreamcatcher follows four childhood friends (Beaver, Henry, Pete and Jonesy) and what happens on their annual hunting trip. Things go awry, people die, aliens try to take over the world...same stuff, different day.

They were brought closer together after sticking up for a mentally retarded youth, Douglas, also known as Duddits, who was being brutally attacked by the jocks in the neighborhood. They soon all become friends and Duddits gives them psychic powers that will eventually be helpful when it’s time to save the world from the evil alien Mr. Gray.
The movie is rated R for violence,language, and gore.

I would explain it here...but you need to read the book (or see the movie, because I am sure that this is the most many of you have read in a long time) to understand what I mean by “gore.” It’s very nasty, to put it mildly, and we should all probably be surprised that I was able to sit through the entire thing without becoming violently ill in the aisleway.

The movie, overall, is decent. It’s not the best, and obviously not the worse. It has its moments and a wonderful cast (Jason Lee plays Beaver...how can you top that?) that pulls almost everything off beautifully.

The only thing I can think of that would have made the movie better was if it had gone into the past with Duddits a little more, like the book did, and if they had done a non-Hollywood alien. We’ve all seen the “big head, little body” prototype and, frankly, it wasn’t scary the first time, what will make it scary this time? I had myself scared when I was reading the book from the alien I had formed in my mind.

Maybe that’s just me.Regardless of it’s shortcomings, Dreamcatcher is undoubtedly worth your seven bucks.