I have to admit Stephen King is an author who has grown on me overtime. And I will say I do love some of the adaptations of his work, especially Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, Misery, Salem's Lot and Green Mile and I do have a soft spot for It despite its flaws. While not the worst of the Stephen King adaptations, Thinner, Sleepwalkers and Tommyknockers are in my opinion worse Dreamcatcher is a rather dull movie I am afraid to say.

In a way though, the book wasn't necessarily the most compelling work of King's in the first place. Intriguing, but lacking the complexity and genuine unnervement that was there in both It and The Stand. But Dreamcatcher, regardless of how good or not-so-good the book is, not only fails to convince adaptation wise, but sadly there is little of merits on its own.

Dreamcatcher to be fair isn't completely redundant. The special effects and production values are excellent, the music is suitably atmospheric, the film does start off well and Morgan Freeman does what he can with his role which compared to how high-calibre Freeman is as an actor isn't much.

However, less than half-an-hour in, Dreamcatcher falls flat and never recovers. A major problem is that it is very hollow emotionally and hard to get into because of the indifferent and poorly explored characters and (very) sluggish pace. The dialogue is mostly clunky, the storytelling and mundane and very by-the-numbers and the acting and directing are bland. But what really spoilt Dreamcatcher was the final act. Both It and The Longoliers had poor endings, but the ending here is close to unwatchable for too many reasons to list.

All in all, dull and meandering film and adaptation. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Dreamcatcher is the story of one nasty alien invasion that's spawning up in the north Maine woods where four friends Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, and Timothy Olyphant have an annual guys get together for a hunting trip. In fact these aliens have tried a few times before and there's an elite military unit headed by Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore that's charged with keeping these large space worms off the planet.

Experience has taught Freeman not to do anything by halves. He hears a report they've landed somewhere and he eradicates everything for miles around. That includes humans and the four hunters are in his radius.

But as it turns out way back when they were kids they saved a mentally retarded young man from bullies. That random act of kindness proves to be their salvation as the four are given the power of mental telepathy. And the retarded young man played by Donnie Wahlberg as a grown man also proves to be their's and the world's salvation.

I guess among other things Stephen King was trying to say you never know when a random act of kindness might pay great dividends. I'm agreeing with another reviewer who says that Dreamcatcher succeeds as drama, horror and even comedy. Check out the scene where two of the guys are trying to contain a worm inside a toilet bowl.

Fans of Stephen King should like this film as well as others like me.

Here's a Stephen King adaptation that starts off great before descending into farce. The first half is a taut, outlandish, well-spun horror yarn with moments not dissimilar to THE EVIL DEAD as a group of men find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a very unpleasant kind of monster for company. It's gruesome and yet humorous with it, featuring some nail-biting set-pieces (the bathroom encounter is unforgettable stuff) and decent performances from an ensemble cast. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there.

The second half transforms into some cheesy alien invasion type wannabe sci-fi epic, with characters lost in the morass and the talents of both Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore wasted as military types. There's a huge set-piece involving the army bombing the hell out of aliens which utilises some of the worst CGI I've seen in a good while. Eventually it all ends with a fizz rather than a bang, with an unmemorable climax to boot. Of the cast, the four principal stars – Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant and Damian Lewis – are all decent, with Lewis performing particularly well in a schizophrenic, Gollum-style turn. There are some great childhood flashback scenes of the kind that King writes splendidly and some wonderful taking-place-in-the-mind situations, so it's a real disappointment that the film ends up so pointless and on such a throwaway note.