Screenplay:
Jeff BuhlerCinematography:
Laurie RoseComposer:
Christopher YoungCast:
Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Alyssa Brooke Levine, Sonia Maria Chirila, Bailey Thain, Jacob Lemieux (more)VOD (2)
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Based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary follows Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), who, after relocating with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbor, Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences. (South by Southwest Film Festival)
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A routine flick without a clear-cut concept that might amuse some non-discerning popcorn-eating teenagers (it contains both jump scares and gore), Pet Sematary will disappoint or anger fans of the original book, as well as thinking fans of the genre. It has some powerful moments (the mom being hugged by her daughter) and nice visuals (the burying ground), but it is also lethally dumb and, what’s more, it lacks any kind of director’s vision along the lines of “I want to preserve the original character of the book by making it into an equally interesting film adaptation”. The cast is alright, the familial ties and the initial atmosphere of the chilling locations work, but all of that is undermined by the further development of the movie.
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I can't say I was directly expecting it, but Pet Sematary is a great honest-to-goodness horror film. It takes the essentials from King's premise, and isn't afraid to play with them in such a way that the result is surprising even to someone who knows it, yet the outcome remains 100% King. During a few scenes there was a completely sepulchral silence in a reasonably full theater, which I think says it all. I cared about the characters and as time went on I became uncertain of almost everything and enjoyed it immensely. Jason Clarke fits the role perfectly and I enjoyed him as much as John Lithgow, the music by horror expert Christopher Young is also good, you hardly notice it while watching but it's worth a separate listen. I'm just supremely satisfied, despite the fact that I was looking forward to the Frankenstein madness of the book and got something completely different (but just as good). It all culminated in an extremely tense finale in a misty graveyard... and the ending! It wasn't a Stephen King ending, it was a Richard Bachman ending!
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I haven't read the book, and I wasn't too impressed with the 80s movie, so I'm pleasantly surprised here. For the first time in a while, a mainstream horror film that doesn't try to be weird and controversial, but is very audience friendly (there are jump-scares and even blood), so as pure horror entertainment everything is on point here, as it should be. The actors are decent and there are thankfully no illogical missteps, visually it's an inoffensive standard and the horror scenes are effective. The finale is nicely atmospheric and uncompromising and the denouement is certainly a surprise. I'm satisfied. 80%.
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Pet Sematary is stuck in the last century and is a routinely-directed showcase of stale resources, with which the creators try in vain to scare the audience, starting with the sinister-looking cat and ending with a funeral procession of children in carnival masks. In contrast to King's book, the film is a very psychologically flat and sparse horror, suffering from the absence of tension, cursed in recurring nightmares of its protagonists, simple grave motifs and obligatory, the cheapest possible jump scares, and without any sign of ingenuity. The film differs only minimally from the previous, thirty-year-old adaptation, as the sporadic changes in the plot suggest that the creators at least tried not to make copy it in its entirety, but (through quality images and contemporary actors) unfortunately, that is where the modernization ends.
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This is an uninteresting and badly made King adaptation, which perhaps no one wished for anyway, as its existence is unjustified when compared with the honorable thirty-year-old version by Mary Lambert. This movie has no penmanship, no energy. The makers of this did not manage to come up with anything interesting, on the contrary, in the parts where they tried to deviate slightly from the book and introduce something new, the movie begins to be so stupid and tawdry to such an unbearable degree that it is just a smack in the face. The movie therefore fails to evoke any sort of emotion in the audience, there are no surprises, just nothing. Finally, the final smack in the face will come during the end credits, when a cover version of "Pet Sematary" from the original movie starts playing, as if the makers put an underlying message that it is just cool to make a tedious and sexless remake of what used to be good years ago today and we should just put up with it. However, I am not going to.
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Photo © Paramount Pictures
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