Pete finds a woman’s car keys and despite being grateful she is weirded out by his bizarre technique and stands him up after agreeing to a date. Their telepathy has left them isolated from society. The four friends are all introduced as successful but unsatisfied. The telepathic link is the more interesting part of the film but Kasdan pushes it to the background in favour of B-movie gore and generic creature designs. The adult Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg) hasn’t been able to make it due to terminal leukaemia. Eventually the five friends drift apart except for a bi-annual hunting trip in Beaver’s cabin. The core conceit to both book and film is the four friends’ telepathic connection gained from a mentally challenged boy they saved in their youth named Duddits. His script trims a great deal of the fat from King’s novel but it still feels burdened by its strange story that never really worked in the book never mind the film. Still he was suffering from a variety of broken bones so we can forgive him, mostly. King is known for his addiction to overlong prose, regularly churning out novels often far longer than Dreamcatcher. In 2014 he told Rolling Stone he disliked the book and it’s easy to see why.

Stephen King originally wrote Dreamcatcher under the influence of the painkiller Oxycontin after a near-fatal car accident. Dreamcatcher stars Morgan Freeman and his ‘unfortunate eye-brows’ Source

Beaver and Pete are killed by the leeches and Jonesy is possessed by an alien he nicknames Mr Grey because he’s grey. An army quarantine lead by Colonel Curtis (Morgan Freeman with unfortunate eyebrows) soon comes into effect. Both strangers proceed to shit out the aforementioned leeches. Henry and Pete come upon a woman in a similar condition on their way back from the store. Four friends Jonesy (Damian Lewis), Henry (Thomas Jane), Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Beaver (Jason Lee) are hunting in the woods when Jonesy and Beaver (just roll with the names) find a man lost and in pain.

It also drained my respect for most of it’s cast. It sapped me of all strength, of the will to write this article and of the desire to visit tropical rivers. Of course, after two hours it turned out that the true leech was the film. The alien lampreys then grow in the human system before being violently expelled from – yes I’m going there – their host’s ass. Worse still the leech-like aliens of Dreamcatcher are born from red dust exhaled by grey aliens and inhaled by humans. Teeth! Reader, if there are leeches then there is no God. Being from Ireland I have no real cause to fear leeches other than the fact that they’re bloodsucking worms with teeth. About thirty minutes into Lawrence Kasdan’s 2003 adaptation of Stephen King’s doorstop novel Dreamcatcher, I remembered my deathly fear of leeches.

Dreamcatcher by stephen king