Dreamcatcher (2003)

Lawrence Kasdan has adapted Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher. You’ve got a director with a serious pedigree tackling unexpectedly populist material, and the difference here from say, Ang Lee, is that Kasdan embraces the stupidity of the whole thing and has created a classic of B-movie cinema, albeit with a massive budget and high production values.

There are two scenes of genius (the animals leaving the forest, and the helicopter attack on the alien ship) but you’re more likely to remember Jason Lee trying to keep an alien trapped inside a toilet, or English actor Damian Lewis playing an American inhabited by an alien with a Dick Van Dyke Cockney accent. Then again, you’ve got Morgan Freeman’s stunt eyebrows competing with Tom Sizemore’s stunt wig, and a whole range of crazy slimy aliens and disgusting bodily function effects.

The disk contains a different ending and the odd deleted scene, but these fail to make any more sense of the story. This is the first story King wrote after being hit in the head by a truck, which explains a lot, and if you thought the book was crazy, get the movie. A Lifeforce for the new century.