Based on a Stephen King novel, "Dreamcatcher" begins with four men who've been best friends since childhood: Henry (Thomas Jane), a therapist; Jonesy (Damian Lewis), a professor; Pete (Timothy Olyphant), a car salesman; and Beaver (Jason Lee), a goof addicted to toothpicks. These guys have more in common than the junior high school they attended; they are all, in varying degrees, psychics. One can find lost keys. Another can diagnose an obese patient with a suppressed childhood memory the patient never voiced.

Every year, they get together in an isolated cabin in Maine. The first thing they do is toast someone named Duddits, their "dreamcatcher." Flash back 20 years, when the four are adolescents. A random act of kindness, which also takes some guts, informs every moment of the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, back in the present, a major blizzard is brewing. Worse, some hovering military helicopters inform them that the entire area has been quarantined and they won't be able to leave for a day or two. Not what you'd call the perfect getaway.

Soon enough, nasty things -- Stephen King nasty -- start to happen. Because there may be readers who haven't seen the trailers, which give everything away, I'm not going to elaborate.

"Dreamcatcher" contains a number of King's favorite motifs. The snowed-in, isolated location ("Misery," "The Shining"). The adolescent pals walking by a symbolic railroad track ("Stand by Me"). The buckets of blood ("Carrie"). The child with unsettling powers ("The Shining," "Firestarter"). The nonhuman power that could save the world ("The Dead Zone"). Alas, there are also a number of motifs taken from other people's movies -- everything from "Alien" and "The War of the Worlds" to "Men in Black" and "The Blob."

King's books often have a hard time making a smooth transition to the screen. Think of "Pet Sematary," "Cat's Eye," "Maximum Overdrive," "Children of the Corn," "Silver Bullet" and "Cujo" (in which we were supposed to believe that some sweet Saint Bernard with toothpaste in its mouth was a revenging fiend). The exceptions are fewer: "Misery," "Stand by Me" and "The Green Mile." But as director Stanley Kubrick proved in "The Shining," the best way to make a good King story into a better movie is to twist and turn it to your own egoistic purposes.

Kasdan is too gentlemanly for that. He's made a King horror tale, not a Kasdan movie. Yet the picture, which can be stereotypical and incoherent, is saved by Kasdan's talent (and the good ensemble cast). Faced with some of the lamest clichés in the scary-movie genre, he still brings you to the edge of your seat. Conjuring credibility and suspense from sorry banalities, he orchestrates the film as a series of cliffhangers, a brilliant way to give it some zap.

In retrospect, the film really doesn't make sense. For example, we're never quite sure who Morgan Freeman, sporting a military buzz cut and wounding underlings at will, is supposed to be. There's a split-personality element that smacks of a Jim Carrey routine. The end is so abrupt that you have to wonder if Kasdan, perhaps protesting some studio interference, simply threw up his hands and turned off his camera.

Still, a class act like Kasdan can -- and does -- make a difference. Our four psychics have a code: "SSDD," which stands for "Same [expletive deleted], Different Day." In "Dreamcatcher's" case, it means "Same [expletive deleted], Different Director."

And it does make a difference.