Occasionally, someone will turn to me and say, “Hey Chandler, you love horror, right? What do you think of Stephen King?” Then, I have to take my blood pressure pills.
I’m not going to be the one to say King is a terrible writer. I will give it to King that he can occasionally give insight to the human subconscious. He has a decent understanding of character development and, get this, he makes a lot of money. But the time when King was producing decent novels—The Shining, The Stand and my personal favorite, Carrie—has long passed. One such work from the mediocre side of his oeuvre is Pet Sematary.
Pet Sematary follows the oh-so-typical “Creed” family as they move into a new house, complete with mom, dad, daughter, baby boy, and cat. The dad “Louis” befriends their neighbor “Jud,” who shows the family a piece of the property they (somehow) didn’t know they bought, the Pet Sematary. This place is where children go to bury their dead pets, not far from a spooky forest where, spoiler alert, if something is buried, it is reanimated into a much darker, eviler version of itself. Well, one thing leads to another, and the family cat “Church” is hit by a car, prompting Louis, under Jud’s persuasion, to bury it in these woods.
I don’t like holding films solely to the standard of the books they’re based on, but it’s worth noting that the newest Pet Sematary film adaptation, released Thursday, follows the novel almost perfectly. So, the question is: does this adaptation share the same flaws as its original source material?
Oh boy, yes it does. And they come rolling in quick.
This is easily the worst film I have reviewed all year. The first thing the viewer notices is what some call acting, what I call “imitating.” A family of actors mimic for the camera what a family would look like, making sure the audience picks up all the lazy exposition through god-awful child acting and things that no couple married for more than a year would ever say to each other.
Viewers who have read the book are treated to a lovely game of count-the-failed-translations. The original source material is already weak, yet the film somehow manages to make it even worse. What few memorable lines there are in the novel are taken out of context and ruined, as is Jud’s whole character, which completely fails to make sense in film form and comes off low-key pedophilic toward Louis’s kids. Don’t worry, though, the film does keep the same stupid lore that King used to attempt explaining the fragmented plot. And when it’s not drawing from this material, it’s unapologetically biting the style of Hereditary, a movie of a completely different league.
Finally, there’s the question of if it’s even scary in the first place. No, no it is not. The spooky cat zombie on every poster is sinfully overused, and nothing that frightening happens until about 75 minutes in, ultimately fizzling within the next 10.
Meanwhile Pet Sematary tries to impersonate a horror film via all of Hollywood’s consumerist tricks. Here’s some thunderstorms, some sudden unsettling music, some tilted camera angles, some creepy child drawings, some cartoony-spooky woods, a ridiculous excess of dream sequences—after all this, you might just be convinced you saw an actual movie.
Because trust me, this is not one. Pet Sematary feels like it’s going through the motions with every single thing it does, to the point where I have a hard time imagining even King himself liking it.
The movie Pet Semetary 1 stops right there… sequel is worse! A repeat of an innocent child with an unstable parents. Stephen King mind of involving children in his movies is very disturbing and all I can say it leads to the truth…that this movie which I thought is about a pet cat or animals…had nothing but the main character of an innocent child returning as a demon is pure deception and warp minded. In a Christian value a child in this movie was a child of not accountability but use a child a young boy as a killer to his entire family because his dad digged him up and buried him in the Pet Semetary so he could return…as a child not a demon. Placing a scalpel on that kid ‘s hand to kill his mom and neighbor makes you wonder why Mary Lambert the director would allow such a thing for audience to watch ? What message does it convey? A doctor who moved away from Chicago with his family so his son becomes a murderer a child..then the father injects poison in child’s neck to put an end to his life for his own regrets of making him live by placing him in old American Indian site of burial. The attack is on our children, our land, the family unit to bring such stories alive which should never be written or seen. Such writers consent to the making of the film although it has a different way of presenting the book to the audience. However Stephen King with children and them being victims such as It which the movie has been discussed by professionals gives a pain seated to the human race when children are victims. Mr.Stephen King your spiritual world you entered is dark and wicked and the demons that help you in your success has not only infiltrated your soul , mind, and body to bring you success but blood in your hands for all the activities that children go through of all sorts of abuse…is when you resurrect stories of wickedness into this world bringing chaos and disorder. You are the evil that one day writers of your criteria will wiped out .. because prayers of people are coming to know truth how children worldwide are being abused in many ways. Soon prayers go up as Justice prevail! You and writers absolutely like you give ideas to people who work their minds and act upon it..to have an agenda to hurt our children of the world and you have blood in your hands because of you and many out there innocent lives being lost because of the horrible and horrific details while you think of a bloody piece of material so you can eat and live by writing and displaying ideas of wickedness that occurs to innocent kids. I was upset as a mother my child astonished and frightening events that took place by an innocent child…through a director and her author.