Dreamcatcher

While hunting in snowbound Maine, four buddies who share a telepathic link (Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant and Damian Lewis) encounter a malevolent alien invasion. As adapted by William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan (who also directed), Stephen King’s novel plays like an earthbound rip-off of the Alien pictures. (The aliens are even nicknamed “Ripleys,” after Sigourney Weaver’s character.) And it borders on self-parody: The aliens also incubate in the human body, but they erupt from the rectum rather than the chest, amid a shower of flatulent fumes that excites more laughter than fear. Grimly directed by Kasdan, with a stylish gleam to the cinematography, the film is glossy, high-camp nonsense. Morgan Freeman, as a demented military commander, grapples with some of the worst dialogue of his career.