In light of the fact that it was made by a director of at least moderate stature -- Lawrence Kasdan of Body Heat, The Accidental Tourist, Mumford, etc. -- this might have raised higher anticipation than most Stephen King adaptations, till you remind yourself of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Like the Kubrick, only more so, the Kasdan is a mishmash of ingredients: mental telepathy, alien invasion, body snatching, Native American mysticism, Stand by Me male camaraderie, goldie-oldies, Apocalypse Now (the Col. Kurtz of E.T.-hunters), and Apocalypse Forever ("One worm kills the world"). With a lightweight cast but for Morgan Freeman -- Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee, Tom Sizemore -- the whole thing plays almost like a parody, just this side of Men in Black, and not at all this side of it in such particulars as the puerile fascination with flatulence, the "shit weasels" (tube-shaped creatures using the alimentary tract as a birth canal), the gentlemanly British accent of the body snatcher, and the literal depiction of a limited-capacity Memory Warehouse as something out of a Roz Chast cartoon (if you recall the one where the romantic alliances of Hollywood stars have displaced Renaissance Art). Kasdan's credentials as a filmmaker would seem, if anything, to have inhibited his commitment to the material. And nothing is surer to drag a filmmaker down than his feeling, rightly or wrongly, that the material is beneath him. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
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