"Pet Sematary" (1989)

Sometimes, dead is better

In teenage years, I admired the prose of Stephen King and even now some of his books makes a rather pleasant read. There were many screen adaptations of Stephen King, including too overrated («Shawshank Redemption), great («The Dead Zone»), average («The Tommiknockers») and below the average («The Shining» TV series). After watching an ad for a new screen adaptation of «Pet Sematary», I have decided to revisit the old version, which gave me some creeps after first watching (when I was 10).

The Creed family moves out of Chicago to a small town in Maine, whose main «attraction» is a pet cemetery for animals, who were killed on a nearby highway. Everything goes on as usual, until a favorite cat of Ellie Creed called Church is run over by a truck. Louis Creed is planning to bury the cat, but a neighbor Jud takes him to a Native American part of the cemetery and tells Louis to bury Church there. After some time, cat reanimates and goes back home.

Marcus Aurelius in his «Meditations» agitates us to treat death as a natural thing and not to be afraid of it. It is good and wise words, but most of the people are afraid of death. It is tough to explain to the children, what death really is, and some starts to lie to children that their beloved cat would come back. Also fear of death is carefully exploited by some founders of sects, who are promising eternal life in exchange for blind adherence to their teachings.

And what, if there is a certain supernatural thing, which would bring back our loved ones to life? It could work and reanimate someone, but what would be the price? Any used supernatural power would require more sacrifices and it would wake the hidden fears of humans, so they would sacrifice it the additional material. And the new reanimated creatures would not be sleepy and slow cats.

The good horror films don’t accent on latex monsters; they accent on internal struggle of characters (remember the first «A Nightmare on Elm Street»). Every film character is a separate hero with their internal fears and worries. Racheal Creed is deadly afraid of death; Louis Creed would do anything in order to spare his family from tragedy; Ellie Creed is too little in order to understand death. The supernatural force is starting to exploit those weaknesses.

Mary Lambert is one of those music video directors who has successfully transitioned to a mainstream cinema. She doesn’t use «pianos in the bushes» and flying monsters; she uses simple methods to grow the atmosphere of fear, hopelessness and despair.  Some scene could still cause shivers, and in the end we would encounter some great action scenes. Also the Director shows the illogical nature of a man, who are behaving as junkies, despite the experienced negative effects.

Summarizing all of the above said, I must say, that there is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. «Pet Sematary» is a smart horror film, which keeps the tense from the first to the last second. I don’t even feel the desire to watch the new version. Let’s hope that other Mary Lambert’s films would be as good.