Horror Theme- Pet Sematary

Logline: Behind a young family's home in Maine is a terrible secret that holds the power of life after death. When tragedy strikes, the threat of that power soon becomes undeniable.

Cast: Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Fred Gwynne

Directed By: Mary Lambert

So, I reviewed a Stephen King novel turned movie in The Shining already. Why not give the king of horror another review? This time I'm going to tackle Pet Sematary, a movie that gets mentioned on a lot of top horror movie lists online.

Review

I'll admit, this was my first time watching this movie. I've heard about it and I've given it thought every year, so this time I basically said that enough was enough and put it in the DVD player.

I must say, I was severely disappointed. I've watched a lot of Stephen King novels that were made into horror movies and I can't quite recall one that was this hyped being so disappointing. I'm not sure where to start, but I was pretty bored for the first two acts. The first act sets up a mysterious cemetery behind the main family's home that has a weird native background and pertains the myth in which bodies buried there come back to life. We find out later that bodies buried there actually do come back to life, but the person that comes back with the body is considerably different and evil. We find this out with the death of the family's cat. He's buried there and comes back to life, but he's quite the evil cat and hisses a lot. The first two acts don't really have much horror.

The third act is full of surprises and is easily the best portion of the movie. A killer baby, gore, a surprising death, etc. Everything that a Stephen King piece should have is explored in the third act, but only then is the movie worth watching.

Topic of the Day

I forgot to mention that this movie was made in 1989, which leads me into my topic of the day. Sometimes movies are memorable for something that happens in a single moment that makes the audience think "did that just happen?". Pet Sematary does something which I don't think many films have done before '89. Spoiler alert: the baby of the family runs out into the middle of the road and gets run over by a transport truck - body parts are shown flying all over. This stood out to me as a "WHAT!?!?!" moment and completely caught my attention just as I was dosing off from the boring beginning. Sometimes a bold move really pays off. This time it definitely did.

Consensus

Pet Sematary is one of those movies I'll watch and forget about come next Halloween when it's time to plot out which movies I choose to watch to get into the tradition. I'll always remember the surprising scene that had me shocked, but the sequences up to that point are all quite forgettable and rather "un-scary". I'd rate this one just below average.

4.8/10