Freeman turns bad in Dreamcatcher

One of the screen's good guys has gone bad; and he loved every minute of it.

Usually known for his gravitas, Morgan Freeman turns up in director Lawrence Kasdan's supernatural chiller, Dreamcatcher, as Colonel Curtis, a US Government operative who doesn't play by the rules.

"When a script like this comes along, there's no question that you want to do it. I've been interested in playing against type for some time and this one has given me the chance. There are levels of good and bad in all of us, so if you can find a character who's bad, who's evil, it's segmented.

"There are levels that you can explain to yourself as an actor: I'm doing this because I have these reasons for it. They're worth doing; you want to find stuff like that."

The chances are that you have your very own Dreamcatcher; they're those feathery little devices like fishing nets which we hang on our windows to, er, catch dreams. They come from Native American legend and they're rather sweet.

Which is probably why the world's greatest writer of spine-tingling horror, Stephen King, took them and turned them into objects of fear. Only King could do it!

In Dreamcatcher, four friends - played by Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant and Damian Lewis - find themselves sharing a supernatural power, which comes in handy when they find themselves at a snow-covered forest hideaway; with a nearby crashed alien spaceship and visitors with a nasty turn of mind.

It's the sort of shocker which raises as many laughs as screams, as Kasdan explains: "It's either funny or it isn't. Sometimes it isn't funny to the audience, but every joke in my movies is funny to me. I always think that the most dire circumstances create the greatest potential for humour. Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I scripted, is full of that. When you think you're about to die, it gives you a wonderful, liberating feeling of anything goes, and that's where all comedy comes from."

Dreamcatcher, the screen rights for which were sold by King for $1, was, adds Kasdan, "a really fun story" which gave the man who brought us Body Heat, Grand Canyon, The Big Chill and Silverado the chance of moving in a new direction: "I had done a lot of ensemble comedies, groups of people and their life decisions, and, frankly, I was sick to death of it.

"In my film, they would have just gone home and said: 'Gee, that was nice', but in King's film, they run into aliens."

Kasdan reveals a secret and long-held secret; he has always wanted to make a film packed with big, splashy special effects: "I started off writing effects movies and never ever got to make one. And now, effects have evolved into an incredibly versatile form, just at the time when I found the story I could use them in. I had a wonderful collaboration with ILM - Industrial Light and Magic - so to actually go in there and have them do 400 shots for me was very exciting."

From King himself comes the perfect scare-the-heck-out-of-'em philosophy; there are, he maintains, three ways to frighten folk: first you have to really evoke terror; then go for horror and then just gross 'em out. Nobody does all three better than King.

Dreamcatcher is actually a terrific film, adapted for the screen by the legendary William Goldman, no stranger to bringing King novels to the screen (Hearts in Atlantis in 2001 and Misery in l990), and with a strong cast that includes Donnie Wahlberg and Tom Sizemore.