Dreamcatcher (Lawrence Kasdan, 2003)

The litany of Stephen King screen adaptations has been as lucrative as prone to resulting in indigestible dross, and it would be foolish to expect anything artful when the King source isn't one of his all too rare excursions outside the sci-fi/horror field. For every landmark The Shining he turns out a dozen disposable variations on The Children of the Corn, and Dreamcatcher is very much in the latter category, even crapping on the kudos he acquired with Stand by Me by taking the template of four stock childhood mates (the ginger one, the speccy one etc.), giving them a secret to keep and revisiting them twenty years later. To chuck aliens that come out of your arse at them. Actual dreamcatchers don't come into it at all: the film's too busy trying to force graveyard laughs out of unimaginative CGI Grand Guignol assaults by the extraterrestrial turdworms on a succession of actors who should have known better, Damian Lewis in particular a sinner just by having so much more to squander than the likes of, say, Timothy Olyphant.
Far more baffling and disheartening, though, is the estimable William Goldman's involvement as screenplay writer. If the bills need to be paid this badly, wouldn't you do it incognito out of sheer shame?

3/10