DREAMCATCHER

Four childhood friends, endowed with extrasensory powers after rescuing a “different” person in trouble, reunite every year to commemorate the event in a cabin in the mountains of Maine: a spaceship has just landed there that threatens to contaminate the human race and spread across the planet like wildfire... Immediately after this brief introduction, what will be remembered as one of the worst films in cinema history materializes. The first forty minutes of “Dreamcatcher” reveal a hackneyed plot filled with all the Kingian stereotypes of the genre: the teenage boys, the oath of eternal friendship, the supernatural, etc. In essence, a re-edition in another flavor of “It” and “Stand by Me”. The whole thing unfolds with an unusual slowness, bordering on self-punishment for the viewer. After surpassing this initial phase, the film changes completely, to the great satisfaction of lovers of sci-fi trash: after the mist of Kingian atmospheres dissipates, the film reveals itself for what it really is: a terrifying piece of trash filled with burps, farts, aliens, military, political conspiracies, and of course, the Salvation of Humanity! In fact, while the first part drew from the best novels of Stephen King, the second is a shameless imitation of “Howard and the Destiny of the World” and other known films, both trash and not. The first note of merit goes to the aliens, which are born as worm-like creatures that (like the glorious xenomorph of “Alien”) incubate in human hosts, but unlike Giger’s creation, they have the funny idea of coming out through the...RECTAL ROUTE!!! Infected humans are immediately recognizable by their generous emission of burps and stinky farts, as well as an abnormal stomach swelling that would suggest more of a food poisoning than an alien presence... The birth of the so-called “shit eel” (named as such by the charming character of Colonel Kurt) is the first scene worthy of merit in the film: in truth, it is a plagiarism of a famous sequence from “Alien 2” that could be titled “Whoever stands up from the toilet dies!”. Notable is also the ambush technique of the alien eel, which tries to tear off the unfortunate human’s penis with an obvious reference to the masterpiece of trash “Killer Condom” (whose design is taken from the mouth of the shit eel), all seasoned with a generous profusion of blood worthy of a Jackson-style trash-splatter in its early days. The extraterrestrials that reach adulthood pass themselves off as aliens from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (evidently Spielberg is followed even in other parts of the universe...) to hide their true nature as giant, bipedal, hydrocephalic eels (over two and a half meters tall), a design that has nothing to envy from “Gappa, the Monster That Threatens the World”. Inevitable adversaries of the aliens are, as per script, the American military, who naturally have known of their existence for thirty years and have formed a special corps (called the “Blues,” to oppose the “Grays” extraterrestrials) led by Col. Curtiss, unfortunately played by the usually brilliant Morgan Freeman, here at the lowest point of his career: the poor great actor was made up with two cotton balls on his eyebrows and a ridiculous perm to achieve the “haircut” effect typical of the most fanatical elements of the American Army. He himself seems eager for the film to end, as his face is almost always an expressionless mask... The main role of the “Blues” is to counter the alien threat, isolating the infested area and grouping all infected civilians in a camp (in defiance of all constitutional rights...) awaiting extermination...for the good of Humanity, of course! Despite their extremely important mission, the Blues are ridiculously equipped with four Apache helicopters and an OH6 “cute one,” that of the Commander, armed with a ridiculous 7.65mm rotary-barrel minigun mounted on the helicopter via a makeshift truss structure that looks very fake and very “Thunder Force.” With such formidable armament, in one of the most hilarious scenes of the film, the Blues attack the enormous (about a kilometer long) disabled spaceship of the Grays. Note that the ship in question seems like a parody of a Ferengi spaceship from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” made like the rest of the special effects in deplorable CG and obviously fake even for the least experienced. The scene of the destruction of the spaceship, carried out by five little helicopters buzzing around the enormous extraterrestrial mass, is worthy of a Norrisian film about Vietnam: what would a serious commander do in that case? Bombing with B1, B2, B52, and the entire strategic strike force of the United States? Nooo...a couple of Hellfire missiles and everything is fine!!! (for the record, the spaceship self-destructs in a cloud of red dust...) The main adversary of Curtiss, and another villain of the film (for fairness) is the alien called Mr. Gray, presented as a kind of space Freddy Krueger, who in human form continues to laugh, lament, and make little jokes in a rather pathetic way...despite this, everyone listens to him. Another memorable scene in the film is the final battle between the good alien (easily recognizable by the noble features of his face) and Mr. Gray, just as the latter is about to conquer the World. The fight is filled with a pathos and epic quality equal to that of the more famous final clash between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla, but unfortunately, being filmed in CG, the final result is inferior to the illustrious predecessor... What to say? The direction of the feature film was even entrusted to an important name, Lawrence Kasdan, who had the honor of working for Indiana Jones in the 1980s as a screenwriter. The film is made like an “A-movie:” a glossy packaging and a great expenditure of money for what ultimately turned out to be a “crazy mess” of Fantozziana memory... Panned by everyone upon release (except...guess who? S. King...), today the film is considered the worst product of recent years, even Blockbuster clerks discourage its rental! Despite this, if watching the film in an artistic way is certainly an experience of cinematic self-punishment, the filmbruttesque interpretation of the film can be almost pleasant, apart from the “pseudo-stand by me” introduction, capable of discouraging many steel wills. The review has sought to highlight the many trash elements of the film, almost as if to underline that the director has involuntarily used all the clichés of the trash movie to obtain a kind of homage to the B-movie shot as an A-movie. If you manage to survive the first part that tempts the viewer to press the stop button on the DVD/videorecorder, the film can offer moments of pleasant laughter.