First off, this is the scariest movie I have ever seen. It may not be so for everyone (and I know comments like that often get you a "0 out 0f 30 people found this helpful" but so be it) but if you like King's visceral, deep-seated horror, I recommend it.The town, the graveyard, the music, the mist everywhere, the monstrous undead animals and the people all make this a frightening ensemble for me. I have to concur with many of the reviewers about the Zelda character (who was incidentally played by a man named Andrew Hubatsek). There's something so phenomenally horrifying about that character to me that I can actually say I have trouble watching the movie, and certainly never again alone. I find those sequences truly terrifying. The flashbacks of Timmy Baderman (sp?) are also scary.
Furthermore, I agree with many of you that this is a different experience from the book, which I also recommend for added terror. I read the book in broad daylight in a friend's house in Hollywood and I still felt like I was alone in the woods at night.
Highly recommend the film to fans of horror, though it might not be your thing if you just dig slashers. DVD completely lacks features, so for the format itself I'd give 2 stars.
PET SEMATARY tells the story of the Creeds, a young nuclear family who has moved from the Midwest to a small college town in Maine. They take up residence in a old country house a few miles outside the town, and it isn't long before they become friendly with their new neighbor, a bucolic but agreeable old coot named Jud who lives across the street. Jud quickly alerts them to the fact that the road between their two houses is a busy rural highway, and he therefore warns them to be always mindful of their young children and the family cat. Many a pet has ended up in the nearby pet "sematary," Jud explains, due to an unscheduled meeting with a speeding truck or car on that infernal highway.
Inevitably, the Creeds' cat, Church, joins the roadkill ranks, but only the father, Louis Creed, is at home when this happens. Neighborly Jud worries about how the Creed children will take the news, so he decides to let Louis in on secret. Just beyond the nearby cemetery where the children of ages past have buried their beloved pets, Jud tells Louis, is another cemetery that was long ago held sacred by the Native Americans once indigenous to the region. Local legend has it that when you bury your dead there, they will return to life before the end of the following day. Sometimes there is a price to pay for this magic, says Jud, as the dead don't always come back exactly the way they were before they died. Nonetheless, Jud thinks it is worth the risk if they can protect the Creed children from the pain of losing a cherished pet. Being a physician, Louis is understandably skeptical, but he humors his elderly friend and, with the stiffened body of Church in hand, follows Jud up to the "magical" burial grounds.
Much to the surprise of Louis, Church does indeed arrive on the Creed doorstep the next morning. In some intangible way, though, Church seems different--no longer a loving feline, but instead stealthy, aloof, and easily provoked to anger. Jud tells Louis to try to ignore theses differences, and he suggests that if Louis remains mum about Church's resurrection, the rest of the family will never know their little secret.
Of course, as one might guess, it isn't long before one of the Creed children meets his fate on the highly trafficked road. But dare the grieving Louis bury his son in the sacred soil of the Indian cemetery? And if he does, will what worked for a cat work for a human? If so, at what price?
PET SEMATARY is a very satisfying horror film that offers the requisite spooky ambiance, frightful imagery, and outright scares, and all without requiring much effort to suspend one's disbelief. Part of the reason the filmmakers pull this one off is, of course, due to the excellent job that King has done in his adaptation of his own novel. But the lion's share of the credit goes to the excellent performances from the cast. TV actor Dale Midkiff, whose acting style usually teeters on the histrionic, here turns in a subtle yet compelling performance as the family patriarch, Dr. Louis Creed. Even when things get really intense for his character, Midkiff maintains control and convincingly delivers the reactions of an educated, loving father who is grasping for a rational means of rescuing his family from a dangerously surreal situation. Denise Crosby--better known to SF fans as STAR TREK's Tasha Yar--also does an unusually good job portraying Louis' perky upper-middle-class wife.
It is the performance of Fred Gwynne that really makes the show, however. Genre fans know Gwynne from his role as Herman in TV's classic horror-themed sitcom THE MUNSTERS. As the rustic and lovable Jud, Gwynne stretches his thespian skills way beyond the limits of the slapstick of THE MUNSTERS to create a credible and convincing elderly Maine farmer. Gwynne could easily take it over the top and upstage his fellow actors here, but he instead keeps it honest and subdued and thereby makes a significant contribution towards pulling the audience into the fantasy of the filmic narrative.
As with many of Paramount's DVDs, this disc is sparse on extras. However, the digital transfer (for the widescreen anamorphic edition) was made from a very clean print, and both the picture and sound quality are great. For King fans and fans of great cinematic horror, owning this film is a must!After reading Stephen King's novel "Pet Sematary" and being a little disturbed by it, I figured that I would rent the movie to see what a terrible adaptation some money-hungry fellow made. After viewing the film I was quite surprised. The first half of the film starts out nice with a happy family enjoying thier new rural home. But then we see the second half of the film in which all turns to hell. After Gage is killed you can't help but feel bad, no one wants to see a boy that cute skin his knee let alone what happens to him in this film. The performances in the film were mostly well done, especially from Fred Gwynne (Jud Crandall), Denise Crosby (Rachel Creed) & Miko Hughes (Gage Creed). The Pet Sematary novel was meant to be disturbing, and this film certainly is just that. Most likely the reason people hate this film and think it's sick is because they too were disturbed by it. It's definitely not a film to give you a positive outlook on life, but I guess that's what makes it such an effective horror film.
Read Best Reviews of Pet Sematary (1989) Here
It was 1989. I was 14 and I thought that Pet Sematary was one of the best movies I'd ever seen. It hasn't aged well. Or rather, I have aged out of it. Upon a recent viewing I came to the unsettling conclusion that this film, despite its horrific subject matter, is basically aimed at a young audience; intentionally or not.Most of the problem is with King's screenplay. Whatever literary strengths he has, they do not translate to film. (Maximum Overdrive...nuff said) It seems that King has very little respect for film goers. He seems to have some respect for film as a medium, but the viewers themselves he writes down to. Look at The Shining, for instance. For years King complained about and trashed Kubrick's classic adaptation. Then King himself finally remade The Shining and he removed all subtlety, crafting a sappy TV mini-series that pandered rather than entertained. Perhaps King likes bad film adaptations, lest a superior film overshadows his work, as is the case with Kubrick's The Shining IMO.
His screenplay for Pet Sematary is up to the same tricks. King does not bother with characterization, he just shoehorns in the books most horrific scenes and pumps them up in some cases (Victor Pascow being the worst offense, he appears once or twice in the book, but in the film the guy is all over the place, doing some sort of stand up comic zombie routine that gets old quick.) He just sort of hopes that characterization will be implied I guess. He also worked in the "spring loaded cat" jump scare several times. You can't disrespect an audiences intelligence much more than that.
The worst part is that none of it makes very much sense. In the book, King went to great lengths to make you believe in his story and it works. Here, King just seems to be shoveling out the story as fast as he can, making story revisions and additions that have no logic in and of themselves and that contaminate the internal logic of the parts of the story that should work. Again, the Pascow angle is the main offender here. In the book he gives a simple warning. It's up to Louis Creed to make the decisions. In the film Pascow becomes an active force that just screws everything up worse with his meddling as he keeps coming back to help out and only ends up helping out the evil force in the MicMac burial ground. Not a very good result for an emissary send from beyond the grave by "higher forces". This is just one example of how little sense the film makes, I could go on for pages and pages. It seems King had his brain turned off while churning out this screenplay. Gone are all of the weighty themes the book explored, only to be replaced by thoughtless illogical attempts to pump up the opportunity to show more ghosts and guts and blood.
King has said that he does not like Pet Sematary as a book. I guess that's understandable. King is, at heart, an optimist. Pet Sematary was his one foray into real pessimistic horror. Perhaps he just felt like turning it into a big joke on those grounds.
I don't have anything bad to say about director Mary Lambert. She did a damn good job considering the screenplay she was working from. In King's original screenplay King tried to rework Jud's character. He wore trendy clothing and listened to the latest rock music on his walkman...you know, so the kids would think how cool this old guy was. Well, if Mary had anything to do with excising that particular bit of cynical pandering...then more points to her. When Stephen King comes along with his own screenplay, and it's a cartoony carnival spook show...well I suppose as a director you give him what you think he wants. Unless you want to end up like Kubrick, listening to this writer whine and complain about you for the rest of either of your natural lives.
The acting here is adequate. Fred Gwynne steals the show, and is largely the only thing that holds it all together. Dale Midkiff does some wonderful round the bend acting towards the finale. Brad Greenquist is having (too much} fun playing the ghost of Pascow, but for what it is its good acting. The only actor who truly made me feel emotion though was Michael Lombard as Rachel Creed's father. I guess he didn't get the memo that this was all goofy fun because his heartbreak at Gage's funeral is keenly felt. Too bad the rest of them didn't miss the memo as well. In short, the actors did what they were asked to do and they did it well for the most part. No real complaints. Unless you're just a jerk that likes to pick on child actors and the like.
Pet Sematary does have a lot going for it though. For one, it's original. Ok not totally original, you will still hear people saying King ripped off his book from a film called Zeder. A movie you've probably never even heard of (and I doubt King had either when he wrote the story) so it's original enough. Especially for the well worn cliches of the endlessly recycled horror genre. It's also very dark. Even with the cartoony gloss smeared all over the film, it's still considered morbid, mean-spirited, bleak, and nihilistic. I don't consider these bad things, especially for the horror genre, except maybe the charge of mean-spiritedness...which does hold some weight. The film does seem to lack a heart...perhaps of any kind, mean-spirited or otherwise.
Perhaps it had to be this way. 1989 was not likely to be a good year for any mainstream film to be so dark and realistic at the same time. Without suppressing the realism it may have been just too much to remain mainstream, which it pretty much had to be considering it was a King vehicle. Mr King is Hollywood's dependable horror whore after-all. No sense making a film with artistic merit that might lower the profit margin.
It's unfortunate, because if it had been allowed to show the same sort of realism that, say, William Friedkin had brought to The Exorcist, this very well may have become a horror classic for the ages, instead of just another (above average) goofy 80's carnival gore show.
Want Pet Sematary (1989) Discount?
Pet Sematary is by far the most disturbing horror film I have ever seen. From the creepy opening credits to the tragic ending you will either be creeped out or disturbed by this movie. The most unnerving part of the film is that you can't root for the killers demise because he is an innocent little boy who did nothing to deserve what happened to him, it is a complete injustice. The fact that Rachel Creed (Denise Crosby) is seen with red, swollen, tear filled eyes after her little boy is taken away from her only makes the tragedy seem real. As well, the flashbacks of the Ludlow town's hidden secrets, told by Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), are intriguing and make you wonder why people wouldn't move far away from that place. Having picked the cutest little boy to portray the tragic role of Gage Creed (Miko Hughes) is one thing, but him giving such an outstanding performance at the age of 29 months is incredible...incidentally it took 2 girls to play the role of Ellie Creed! All in all this film is great for people who can stand emotionally unsettling situations, it is truely a horror film.Save 14% Off
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