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Credits

Release Date: Mar 21, 2003; Rated: R; DVD Release Date: Sep 30, 2003; Genres: Horror, Sci-fi, Thriller; With: Morgan Freeman and Thomas Jane; Distributor: Warner Bros.

You don't have to have read the Stephen King source material to know that the four friends who share a boyhood secret are in trouble when they reunite for a weekend in the woods. But nothing prepares you for this garbled adaptation, full of sluglike alien thingies coming out of people's butts, Army covert ops led by a rogue colonel (Freeman), and childhood flashbacks that shamelessly echo ''Stand By Me''. Knowing that director Lawrence Kasdan collaborated with dean-of-screenwriters William Goldman, you want to assume it's a thuddingly failed genre satire. But they appear to have been playing it straight. God help them.

EXTRAS In various making-of features, King calls this a good adaptation, Kasdan considers it his most fun shoot, and various effects guys discuss the challenge of creating the derivative critters.


Posted Oct 03, 2003
 

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