At my request, my Mom tried watching the movie based off of the Stephan King story Dreamcatcher and did not find it funny at all. She remembers it as being a dark and serious movie.....I gotta let you know, subtle humor is lost on my Mom in a variety of contexts, this is usually most obvious when watching movies together. There are so many ways in which we are similarly crazy but for whatever reason, the genetic trait does not translate over to celluloid.
In response, I spent an hour or so writing an email detailing the conversation the boyfriend and me had concerning this film. In no way is this a full synopsis of the film, but these were a few of the many reasons why this movie is so hilarious, for the sake of debate (and limited attention span), here are a few of my favorites:
1. The premise as to why this group of friend has psychic powers is amazing: 4 kids save a “mentally deficient” kid from eating a dog turd. He bestows psychic powers upon them. I mean, it sounds like a perfectly logical set of circumstances. There had to be some sort of explanation as to why they had these powers and this is the best the writers* could come up with?
* Footnote: To my amazement, a couple days after I wrote this email to my mom, Tom and I were discussing the movie and he looked up the movie info and informed me that the script and plot ran almost 100% true to Stephen King’s story line. Take from that what you will---there was a very long pause on my end due to shock when I heard this. The kind of long pause where when something that started off as a prank ended with dog poop all over you…..that’s right, you can take that anyway you want as well.
2. The “worm” itself…. ( -aka- Stephen King’s alien) We started to refer to it (endearingly) as the shitweasel, which is now my new favorite word du jour. The monster had so much potential to be amazingly cool a la “Aliens” style and burst through peoples’ chests, like a brilliant phoenix and scare the hell out of everyone. Instead, it sneaks its way out through the backdoor like a BM gone terribly, terribly wrong and it looks like an overgrown nightcrawler with teeth!! Instead of being terrified, the host human dies in terrible embarrassment thinking he has pooped his pants in a big way. Hens, the Shitweasel. I have to thank Aaron and Chris for seeing this movie as well and coining that term.
3. The story jumps around---A LOT. I watched half the movie on my own before Tom came home from work and joined me for the second half of the feature. While trying to explain the story line, I realized that I sounded like an 8 year old with sever ADHD and a problem with compulsive lying. Here was the following conversation that Tom and I shared while I tried to catch him up to speed:
Me: “So there are 4 friends and they are psychic and going to spend a weekend out at a remote cabin in the woods. One of the friends was driving out to the cabin and found a lost hunter roaming through the snow and picked him up and met up with another of the psychic friends out at the cabin.
The hunter had some abnormal swelling going on in his stomach and chest and was farting and feverish like he had some super nasty food poisoning. The hunter locked himself in the bathroom for a long time and 2 of the psychic friends broke down the door and found the bathroom covered in nasty-nasty and the corpse still having watery BMs.
The “weasel” monster was in the toilet and they tried to trap it there by having the character that was played by actor Jason Lee sit on top of the closed toilet lid (who is portrayed as being exceptionally neurotic and requiring toothpicks to quell his anxiety) while his friend (Damian Lewis) runs out to the tool shed to fetch duct tape for the purpose of containing the monster in the toilet bowl. (Spoiler alert: this is funny given further development towards the end of the film).
Damian takes his sweet-ass time and Jason gets so anxious he NEEDS to pick up one of his toothpicks that he had dropped into a shmear of doo-doo. This shifts his weight off the toilet lid and releases the Shitweasel from the toilet, resulting in the weasel violently kills him. Then the “weasel” morphs into a different type of alien-monster and takes bodily control of the character played by Damian’s --- he can see what’s happening but can’t control the monster.”
Tom: “What? Why would he want to pick up a toothpick out of poop to put in his mouth?”
Me: “I know, right?? He had to die somehow in that bathroom and that is the plot story they chose to follow. “
Tom: “????” (Look of severe confusion) “Why do they have psychic powers?”
Me: “When they were kids they saved the mentally deficient kid from being force-fed a dog turd by bullies and he bestowed psychic powers upon them.”
Tom: “What?”
Me: “I know.”
Tom: Stared very skeptically at me and then at the TV. His confusion was mounting and I could tell that the story was confusing the hell out of him and that confusion was causing frustration. I wasn’t leaving much of anything out—the story line was just that stupid. In turn, I was also getting frustrated—the movie was just that poorly written and I was having a hard time conveying that to Tom. It wasn’t his comprehension, nor my explanation. It was HOLLYWOOD’S FAULT.
“ What is going on now? Why are there military men?”
Me: “The military knows that there are aliens in that remote forest region and they quarantined the area. They want to carpet bomb the Sh*tweasel.”
Tom: “Why are the helicopter pilots hearing childrens’ voices? Is that Morgan Freeman? What is he doing there?”
Me: “The aliens are psychic too. They are trying to use mind control to keep the pilots from bombing them. Morgan Freeman is apparently a general or something like that. He’s in charge of quarantining the alien situation.”
Tom: “Ok…..so why are the 4 guys psychic? And why does the guy who has the alien inhabiting him have a bad British accent?”
Me: “I don’t know. But Damian’s character apparently can keep the alien from controlling him psychically, just not physically and that’s why he can see what’s happening and the alien manipulating his body but can’t control it.”
The movie continues to progress. I watch it snickering from time to time. Tom pulls out his computer and ignores the film, looking up when we are about 10 minutes away from the end and asks me:
“Why is Morgan Freeman in the helicopter trying to gun down the other military guy on the ground? Is it revenge for something? I thought they were on the same side.”
Me: “Yeah, they were on the same side…the other dude was his right-hand-man and defected from the Army. I really don’t know, I figured Morgan Freeman was on his way to help the situation because that was his right-hand-man, not gun him down with a 50 caliber machine gun out of a vendetta…..oh, now it looks like the army guy on the ground shot the helicopter down and they are both dead.” (Explosion on TV screen)
Tom: “???”
Me: “I don’t know, it doesn’t make any sense, I guess this is the writers’ way of tying up the loose ends of the story.“ (Footnote: and a presentation of Morgan Freeman’s raw power unleashed. If Morgan Freeman can’t have his sidekick, EVERYONE DIES by gunfire. He went after that dude like a pimp goes after one of his hoes that tries to leave him. STRAIGHT UP)
Tom: “Is that guy supposed to be the adult version of the retarded kid that was supposed to eat the dog turd?”
Me: “Yes, but with terminal cancer.”
Tom: …. (look of WTF all over his face)
Me: “I don’t know Tom, he’s just there.”
So here is where the movie loops back on itself and the movie could have ended 20 minutes in. Remember when I was talking about the weasel being in the toilet? Well, the alien had made sure that there was a dog that was infected by the weasel and had baby shitweasel eggs gestating inside. He took the dog to a water reservoir where the eggs were going to be released into the water supply and make it back to civilization. Ok…..wait a second……why couldn’t the weasel just lay the eggs in the toilet at the beginning of the movie???? This race of aliens is mad-inefficient. Its genetically predisposed to host itself INSIDE OF HUMANS and to BURST THROUGH THEIR BUTTS. Are you telling me that these aliens are such idiots that (a) he couldn’t have just laid some eggs inside that toilet and it would have been flushed by other humans trying to get rid of the smell? (b) these aliens can manage space travel and psychic control but they couldn’t figure out how to use a human for a host that was on a city-sewer system?? Ay dios mio!!
Then the mentally deficient, terminally ill, psychic gift-bestower who was dragged out to this remote region turns into a different type of alien and battles with the leader of the Sh*tweasels and saves planet earth.
~~~~ FIN ~~~~
That is the way I watched and interpreted the movie.
**BIG SIDE NOTE: I wrote the following before I was told that this movie followed Stephen King’s story line very closely.
Basically, the storyline followed THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE via the writers – it was both hilarious and frightening to see that this calamity had enough of a budget to feature Jason Lee, Morgan Freeman and Damian Lewis. Whenever a character is no longer needed in the story, he is just killed in the most convenient (and coincidentally, most unbelievable way possible). I have no idea who signed off on this and wrote the check but its really reinforcing my belief that the less accountable you are for the outcome of anything; the more people buy into it. The moral of the story: Where’s my check?!
Like I said in the beginning, I felt like what started as a practical joke ended with being smattered in dog turd.
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