This article brought to you by Lake Gregory Recreation and Mountains Community Hospital
By Nathan Hurlbut
Best-selling author Stephen King has claimed that his 1983 novel ‘Pet Sematary’ was the one book he wrote that disturbed him the most. In fact, once he had finished writing it, he found it so emotionally distressing that, as the story goes, he locked it away in a drawer with no intention of having it published during his lifetime.
However, life has a way of thwarting even the most determined decisions. After ending his publishing contract with Doubleday in the early 1980’s, he discovered he still owed the publisher one more novel. The drawer was summarily unlocked, the novel submitted, and four years after it was written, it became one of King’s biggest sellers.
This being the nineteen eighties, when King’s novels had become a hot property for film adaptations, Hollywood inevitably came calling for a film version. “Pet Sematary” the movie came out in 1989 and, it must be said, proved to be a pretty disappointing big screen translation of such a frightening property.
Despite the film’s shortcomings, King’s name recognition made it a financial success at the same time. As the years passed, this marriage of box office success and audience disappointment made it a hot property for a remake as well. So, thirty years after its initial adaptation, a second version of “Pet Sematary” has now arrived in theaters.
From the very start, it’s apparent that this new version is an improvement over its predecessor (which, admittedly, didn’t set the bar particularly high.) Directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer effectively create a slow burning atmosphere of dread that is sustained throughout the film. A chilling early scene hints at the film’s potential when Rachel Creed (Amy Seimetz) and daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence) watch children wearing animal masks walk a funeral procession through the woods. It’s as effectively mysterious as it is unsettling.
Meanwhile, screenwriter Jeff Buhler brings King’s weighty themes of mortality to bear in the story, most pointedly when Ellie’s parents have to discuss the demise of a family pet with their young daughter. Horror movies are notoriously known for their ability to exploit a fear of the unknown for maximum dramatic impact. However, Buhler works King’s thematic concerns to push past the superficial elements of horror into a meditation on death itself.
The story also explores themes of guilt courtesy of flashbacks to Rachel’s disturbing past when she provided living assistance for her sister Zelda, who was afflicted with spinal meningitis. While these scenes deliver some of the film’s most effective jump scares, they also provide Rachel’s character with a level of depth that makes her the most sympathetic character in the movie. Unfortunately, it also serves as a reminder of how absent this quality is from the other characters in the story.
It’s a telling reminder of how the film’s characters serve primarily as plot devices here- cogs in the machinery of storytelling. (This is despite John Lithgow’s ability to bring a weighty degree of homespun authority to his character of local neighbor of Jud.) The film’s potential for addressing the all-consuming power of grief eventually becomes subservient to the demands of keeping the story moving relentlessly forward.
King purists may also object to the liberties the movie takes with its source material, despite the fact that the changes to its original story are initially rewarding, especially for anyone overly familiar with the original story. Unfortunately, much of this early promise starts to fade as the movie pushes towards a more conventional climax. In these later stages, the movie transforms into a more typical slasher movie with undead overtones, and these story alterations are used more for their attention-seeking value than an improvement upon the source material.
However, that’s just before the film pulls out one last trick with its final harrowing scene, and the movie takes a turn towards redeeming itself. It’s a reminder that while this new “Pet Sematary” may frequently stumble like a reanimated corpse towards its eventual resolution, there’s still plenty for horror fans with a grisly taste for the macabre to savor here.