Respond to these rapid questions in our Pet Sematary quiz and we will tell you which Pet Sematary character you are. Play it now.
These days, it appears that virtually any film that is at least 25 years old and is not titled “She’s Out of Control” is now considered a classic, regardless of its genre. In some circles, even a film like the 1989 adaptation of Stephen King’s infamously dark 1983 novel “Pet Sematary,” despite the fact that the film, aside from a strong performance from Fred Gwynne at his most endearing and an amusingly cheesy title song from the Ramones, was little more than gross, stupid, and incompetently made garbage, has now been elevated to the status of a masterpiece by some. Those considering making another adaptation of the novel have an advantage in that they do not have to contend with the shadow of a true classic like Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” or Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” hanging over their heads; all they have to do is make something that is marginally better than an unforgivably bad film. Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer have accomplished exactly that with their adaptation of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary,” though the emphasis here is much more on the “marginally better” than the “better.”
In case you’re unfamiliar with the plot, it begins with the Creed family, which includes husband Louis (Jason Clarke), wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz), daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence), son Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), and their beloved house cat Church, arriving in the quaint rural town of Ludlow, Maine, to settle into their new home, which is both charming and functional. Unfortunately, if one makes the mistake of stepping off the curb, they run the risk of being run over by one of the semi trucks that are constantly rolling down the highway just a few hundred feet away from their home. If that wasn’t shocking enough, consider the fact that the back portion of their property is home to a local pet cemetery, where children have been interring their furry companions for decades. Soon after, Church is struck and killed by a truck, and when Louis is at a loss for how to break the news to Ellie, his next-door neighbor Jud (John Lithgow) offers to assist Louis in burying his neighbor. After being assured that Ellie truly and deeply loved him, he transports Louis far beyond the pet cemetery to another area of the woods and instructs him to bury Church there in lieu of in the pet cemetery.
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Even if you are unfamiliar with the specifics of the story, it is unlikely that you will be surprised to learn that Church returns the following day, albeit in a slightly worse state than before—he smells bad, he is ill-tempered, and he begins lurking around like a prop in a horror film. According to Jud, who later expresses regret for his actions, this burial ground has the ability to bring the dead back to life, though they are not the same as they were before their deaths. It will probably come as even less of a surprise to learn that, following an even greater tragedy, a grieving Louis will choose to use the burial ground once more in the hope that things will turn out better this time. To say that everything goes wrong would be an understatement. Louis’ well-intentioned attempt to avoid death quickly devolves into a Grand Guignol-style procession of flashing knives, spurting blood, and sliced hamstrings.
Pet Sematary Quiz
To be sure, King’s original novel was little more than an extra-gruesome riff on the classic tale “The Monkey’s Paw,” which was written by Edgar Allan Poe. Even though it was not one of his more elegant efforts, the book delivered a gut-punch that allowed readers to overlook all the plot holes (ranging from why Jud would even bring up the burial ground to wondering why a family with two young children would buy a house that close to a busy highway) and also served as an exploration of people who are struggling to process intense feelings of grief and loss, as well as how taking short cuts can lead to disaster for everyone involved. In adapting King’s novel, screenwriter Jeff Buhler mostly sticks to the plot basics, but he is unable to figure out how to put them into action in a compelling manner. With each passing minute, “Pet Sematary” transforms into a more terrifying contraption in which every third line of dialogue is overly fraught with foreboding, serving only to fill the gaps in time between the increasingly ineffective jump scares and gross-out moments.
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Fans of the previous iterations of “Pet Sematary” will notice a couple of significant differences this time around—one of which centers on the victim of the tragedy that inspires Louis’ insane act of attempted resurrection, and another which attempts to outdo the already depressing tone of the original. The former is not a bad idea in theory, and it could have resulted in some legitimately creepy moments if the film had been made with more grace than this, but it ultimately amounts to absolutely nothing in the final product. For some reason, the producers have inexplicably chosen to highlight this particular deviation in the trailers, effectively killing off an opportunity to shock viewers who might otherwise be interested.) Similar to that, the new ending, while it may have sounded good in theory, comes across as a pointless twist that reworks one of King’s most haunting endings into something that appears to have been repurposed from an abandoned “Creepshow” story.
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“Pet Sematary” is a generally terrible film, but it is marginally better than the first installment and never quite as offensively bad as the first. As for the performances, a couple of them are quite good—Seimetz and Laurence are both decently touching and believable in their roles, and Lithgow’s amiable old coot game is also quite good. After all is said and done, however, this is still one of those stories whose ghastly power is best experienced on paper because it forces the reader’s mind to conjure the kinds of images that the majority of people will go to great lengths to avoid contemplating in real life. When those unimaginable horrors are brought to life, both then and now, they can’t help but appear to be greatly reduced and even silly in comparison to their original magnitude. Thus, an iconic work of horror literature has once again been reduced to the status of an inconsequential motion picture that may do well at the box office for a week or two before disappearing from sight and disappearing from memory. In fact, the only thing that is truly frightening about this “Pet Sematary” is the possibility that it will be considered a classic in a few decades’ time by some.
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