IF YOU go down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise. And not a particularly pleasant one, either.

Lawrence Kasdan's adaptation of the chilling novel by Stephen King is a car crash of a movie. As much as you want to turn away, you can't help but stare at the disaster unfolding before your eyes.

Extra-terrestrials have crash-landed in the sleepy town of Maine and the aliens are quickly infecting all of the local wildlife - including the unsuspecting locals - with deadly red spores.

Best friends Henry (Thomas Jane), Beaver (Jason Lee), Jonesy (Damian Lewis) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) get caught up in the invasion during a hunting expedition deep in the woods.

The quartet are soon fighting for their lives when one of the group is killed by a worm-like alien with razor-sharp fangs which germinates in the human host's stomach and then explodes from their rectum to infect other unfortunate souls.

The military, led by deranged Colonel Curtis (Morgan Freeman) and Captain Owen Underhill (Tom Sizemore), is drafted in to quarantine the townsfolk and deal with the threat, but the malevolent alien force is far greater than anyone imagined.

Dreamcatcher is an unmitigated mess, with dialogue and overwrought performances likely to inspire embarrassed giggles rather than gasps or screams.

In fact, the scariest image in the entire film is Colonel Curtis' bushy eyebrows, which are large and hairy enough to qualify as foreign bodies in their own right.

Performances are so flat, you wonder whether the actors really have been possessed by aliens.

Screenwriter William Goldman has eviscerated King's source novel, reducing a compelling spooky thriller to an excruciating monster movie.

Special effects are accomplished and there one or two intentional laughs, such as Beaver's struggle to keep one of the dreaded worm aliens trapped inside a toilet by sitting on the lid as the creature struggles to escape beneath him.

Rating: 3/10.