Not even Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey can salvage this much-anticipated adaptation of King's masterpiece, which kicks off with one of the best opening lines in literature: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Kasdan struggles to master any of the film's constant and distracting tonal shifts, none of which are developed or executed effectively. Which isn't surprising, given its problematic plot about a group of friends caught in the middle of an extra-sensory alien invasion by way of (in part) a fanged, extraterrestrial worm that works its way through woodsman Jason Lee before plopping into a toilet.Īfter its engaging opening scenes, which introduce us to one of the most appealing King ensembles ever - Timothy Olyphant, Lee, Damian Lewis, and Thomas Jane - Dreamcatcher, adapted by Misery screenwriter William Goldman, devolves into a sloppy, dull thriller with instantly-dated CGI and a frustrating disregard for emotionally-honest responses to all the crazy from its characters. Speaking of Movie Jail, that's where Dreamcatcher director Lawrence Kasden ( The Big Chill, co-writer of Star Wars: The Force Awakens) found himself after this high-profile King adaptation notoriously flopped at the box office. The end result is, well, a lifetime sentence in Director Jail for King, who encapsulated his experience with the film by saying this: "I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and I really didn't know what I was doing." The movie can't decide whether it wants to be a full-throttle B-horror movie or play it "serious" with some B-movie elements. Maximum Overdrive struggles to settle on a consistent tone, as King's erratic sense of pacing and structure get in the way. Emilio Estevez (whose father, Martin Sheen, appeared in the far superior The Dead Zone) rises up to lead a motley resistance against the machines. King's only attempt to direct a feature film is a visually and narratively uninspired mess that seems completely uninterested in having any fun with the source material's wacky premise: After a comet passes Earth's sky, machines and vehicles become sentient and target humanity. Maximum Overdrive is often considered the worst King adaptation, especially by its director: Stephen King.
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