"My God, man, you have beautiful eyes. "

This is why I don’t have a cabin in the woods. You go away for a relaxing weekend and end up with a toilet full of alien.

Based on a novel by Stephen King, Dreamcatcher tells the story of four men, friends since childhood, and an ill-fated hunting trip in Maine. “Ill-fated” can mean many things, but since we’re talking about Stephen King you can probably guess that it involves monsters and blood and horrifying death. And you know, maybe it’s just relief that Moviefone didn’t send me to see Boat Trip, but I liked it, despite some flaws which I’ll get to in a minute.

As the movie opens, we’re introduced to the four men — Jonesy, Beaver, Henry and Pete — each of whom displays telepathic ability. There’s a horrible accident, and suddenly it’s six months later and the guys are on their annual trip to the woods, and look, there’s the character we thought had just died. Is he who he says he is? Who is this Duddits they keep referring to? And what does the dreamcatcher have to do with it, anyway? (The answers to those questions are: hey, I’m not going to spoil it for you; a retarded boy they befriended as children who just may be the key to everything; and, not so much, actually.)

"Y-M-C-A."

Dreamcatcher works best in its first two thirds when director Lawrence Kasdan and his co-writer William Goldman make the most of their X-Files-flavored story. In their hands the body-snatching alien plot feels deliciously retro instead of over-used, and they employ every suspense-building trick at their disposal. This is a nail-biter of a movie and I spent most of it breathlessly wondering what was going to happen next. Kasdan makes the most of his isolated setting, and the psychic bond that the friends share is used to good effect.

I also liked the Memory Warehouse, a place in Jonesy’s mind where he stores all the tidbits of information he’s accumulated over the years. Kasdan visualizes it as a vast library housing a labyrinthine series of rooms and staircases. It’s a cinematic touch that’s both charming and useful, as Jonesy “hides” there from the alien that has taken over his body.

Eyebrows. That's all I'm sayin'.

But what about those flaws I mentioned? Well, the same deliberate pacing that generates such suspense early in the movie turns deadly in the last act, which stretches on far too long, particularly since that’s the point when the plot holes become obvious. (Science fiction has never really been King’s strong suit.)

Even worse is the shortage of character development. The four friends are barely distinguishable from each other. One gnaws on toothpicks and spouts a steady stream of catch phrases, but that alone doesn’t tell us much about him. Another nearly commits suicide at the beginning of the movie, though we never learn why and it doesn’t have any bearing on later events. The characterizations are so weak that this marks the first time I’ve ever disliked Jason Lee in a movie; not even he can pull off the faux-colorful dialogue that Kasdan and Goldman have written for him.

Morgan Freeman fares a little better as Colonel Curtis, a man who has been driven mad by decades of fighting aliens and is a little too eager to kill off the humans he suspects of being infected by the toothy extraterrestrials.

I’m recommending Dreamcatcher, because of its stylish and suspenseful buildup. It’s too bad, though, that the climax, like so many King adaptations, seemed to lose something in the translation.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2.5 out of 4 bananas