Stephen King novel translate too poorly to screen

Dreamcatcher

Starring Thomas Jane, Jason Lee and Morgan Freeman

Directed… Dreamcatcher

Starring Thomas Jane, Jason Lee and Morgan Freeman

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan

Upon finishing Stephen King’s ultra surreal book, “Dreamcatcher,” I had the notion that the author had actually set out to write a story impossible to film, one that wouldn’t have Hollywood producers bothering him for rights to make another mediocre horror flick with his name on it.

The occasionally respectable director Lawrence Kasdan has filmed almost every word. This is not a good thing.

Turns out, the problem isn’t that the book couldn’t be filmed – it’s that it shouldn’t have been. At least, not in such a rigidly faithful manner. To quote David Cronenberg, “In order [for a filmmaker] to be faithful to a book, you have to betray it.”

King’s book was meant to be a literary experience, not a screenplay. Kasdan’s overkill of the adaptation results in a slew of moments that – while they work on the page – are awkward on screen and even laughable.

We follow four men – psychically linked since a shared childhood experience – who go into the woods on a hunting trip and encounter some feisty crash-landed aliens. The creatures are hostile and so is the secret military outfit, led by the possibly crazy Colonel Curtis (Morgan Freeman), that will do whatever it takes to contain the red fungus and human-inhabiting worms that are spreading from the crash site, even if it means the slaughter of all exposed civilians, including our heroes.

The film benefits from its King-born characters – writing quirky, realistic people has become second nature to the author – but their development here is diced up and rushed. Even Freeman fails to bring what’s needed to make his character memorable.

The most unforgivable blunder is Kasdan’s handling of events from the characters’ childhood. King’s emotional moments tend to walk a fine line between honesty and cheesiness, even on the page; pouring his every word onto the screen at these moments is just clumsy. And it doesn’t help that the child actors do such a poor job.

The director also loses track of the tone. It’s fine early on – tense and creepy – but gets more and more wobbly as the film progresses. By the end, which he takes way too long – more than two hours – to get to, he’s tossing in cartoon-like sound effects and “Star Wars” style scene transitions at random. This is where the film stops being scary.

And, while the wholeheartedly depicted and surprisingly vulgar gore effects are successful, the computer generated creatures suck. They have no presence and aren’t nearly as menacing as they need to be. I long for the days when artists such as Rob Bottin and Stan Winston made monsters that were really there.

Setting aside the fact that the book should have been reinvented for the screen – screw the purists, they’re wrong – I salute “Dreamcatcher” for at least being a serious, unique, ambitious, though failed, horror attempt.