King-o-Ween: Pet Sematary (1989)

Hitting the road with Gage and Church.

As is my history with many Stephen King books, I read Pet Sematary at way too young an age. 

I don’t think it was quite in middle school — that was when I devoured Misery, The Shining and It. But I was still years from getting my high school diploma when I picked up King’s book about death, grief and murderous toddlers. As you might expect, it gave me nightmares, which is why I likely never got around to Mary Lambert’s film adaptation.

King has famously said that the 1983 novel is one of his few works to truly scare him. And while I don’t know that it’s the scariest thing he’s written  — some of his short stories have kept me up a bit later — it’s definitely one of his grimmest tales. It has some of his most grotesque passages and its subject matter is as bleak as it gets, tackling parents’ worst nightmares and our cultural refusal to discuss the fate that awaits us all. 

In its best moments, Lambert’s film replicates the dour mood and stark horror of King’s novel. It’s a thoughtful and faithful adaptation that doesn’t trade the book’s brooding for over-the-top gore and nonstop thrills. In doing so, it unnerves in a way few studio horror movies do. While there are a few choices that keep it from completely succeeding, it’s effective at creating a sense of omnipresent dread and doesn’t blanch when it comes to tackling some of the story’s darkest plot turns. 

One family’s nightmare 

When Louis and Rachel Creed (Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby, respectively) move their family from Chicago to rural Maine, they’re hoping for a quiet life and slower pace. They have a beautiful home, with paths winding into deep woods and beautiful locations for family picnics — just never mind the busy road right outside the house, which semi trucks routinely careen down. Other than the traffic, it seems like an ideal location to raise their two children, Rachel and Gage, as well as their cat, Church. The family is even greeted by a folksy neighbor named Jud (Fred Gwynne), who welcomes them with warm tales and cold beer. 

But, of course, this is a Stephen King tale, and bad things await the Creeds. It starts on Louis’s first day as a university physician, when an accident leads to the horrible death of student Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist). Pascow’s spirit shows up to warn Louis about something dangerous on the horizon, and you’d think it would make him reconsider agreeing to traipse out to a mysterious Indian burial ground with Jud when the family cat dies. When that cat returns from the dead, vicious and reeking of death, you’d hope Louis would think twice about returning to the cemetery when the family suffers horrific tragedy. But grief has a way of messing with your brain. 

Lambert’s film is best known for the sequence (spoilers for a 32-year-old film) where Gage is resurrected and goes on a murderous rampage. But that’s only the final 15-20 minutes of the film. The actual story is more thoughtful and dread-soaked. King contributed the screenplay, and he ensures that most of the most important details of the story (save for the mystical wendigo that haunts the woods) are included.

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Mortality-minded horror 

I’m 42, and at the age where my mortality is a constant reminder. Three of my grandparents have died in the last few years; my parents are now comfortably in their sixties. I’ve had several friends pass due to illness and other tragedies, and I’m well aware of my own maladies. On top of that, I’m raising two young children, and am constantly reminded how fragile and helpless they are. Pet Sematary scared me as a kid because of its gore and viscera; I imagine that re-reading it now would send me into a spiral because of how it zeroes in on the things that keep me awake at night. 

Working from King’s screenplay, Lambert engages many of the same ideas. There’s a gloomy pall hanging over much of the movie, a shadowy dread that never lets us escape the reminder that death is coming. The movie’s scariest moments have little to do with the supernatural at all. As with King’s novel, the movie deals with Rachel’s discomfort over death, which stems from a traumatic incident with her terminally ill sister as a child; those sequences are starkly terrifying, as the actor playing Zelda (Andrew Hubastek) contorts and twists their body into a variety of grotesqueries. Gage’s fate is played all too real, with some quick cuts and a flash of a bloody shoe leaving the worst to our imaginations. Pet Sematary is at its most horrifying when it reminds us that death is real, unpredictable and unstoppable. 

When it gets into its supernatural moments, the movie’s more of a mixed bag. I think Pascow’s death, for instance, is one of the most horrific moments of the film; the makeup and effects work as he’s laying on the stretcher, brains and blood dripping on the ground, is affecting. When Pascow shows up as a ghost, it’s a little less effective. Early on, there’s a mix of affability and dark humor to his random comings and goings. By the time he’s clearing the way for Rachel to return home and playing Jedi mind tricks, the film tips into unintentional humor. 

And I don’t know that the film can ever top the death of Gage for sheer emotional devastation. Lambert wisely doesn’t linger on the accident that kills him but rather gets her point across through some quick shots. In the events that follow, the funeral and subsequent grave-robbing are deeply upsetting moments, and Lambert gets great emotional mileage out of a quick cut of a tiny hand in an overturned coffin. It’s the all-too-familiar horror of real life that provides some of the scariest material in the movie; it can’t help but lose some of that intensity when it goes full-bore monster movie. 

Zelda, for instance, is terrifying in the flashbacks to Rachel as a child. She’s a monstrous threat seen through a child’s mind, contorted and sneering at her sister. When she reappears near the end to torment adult Rachel, it’s too over the top and garish; the cackles are more akin to the Wicked With of the West. More effective are the sequences with the resurrected Gage. Lambert stages the sequences with shocking brutality and increases the nightmarish fear with Gage’s joyful giggles (his phone call with Louis is deservedly a classic horror moment). The film’s final shot skirts the balance between bleak horror and dark humor and would work even without cutting to black on a scream (although that doesn’t hurt). 

An admirable effort 

I’ll admit that I expected little out of Pet Sematary, mainly because I didn’t believe a studio film would engage with King’s pitch-black material faithfully. But Lambert’s film works because the director, working from King’s script, is interested in exploring the way death crouches at the edge of our lives, and how we’re content to try to shove it into the cupboards. But it won’t stay hidden; sooner or later, we have to reckon with it. The gray, shadowy tone, even during its sunny sequences, feels right. It soaks the screen in a feeling of dread. 

If the film is hampered, it might be by performances. Midkiff is an affable, likable actor but doesn’t bring much to Louis beyond being the mourning father driven mad by grief. The performance feels oddly shallow and stiff, and I can’t tell whether that’s because Midkiff is giving a poor performance or because Louis is one of King’s lesser-realized characters (King’s best characters have some sort of internal demon to fight off; Rachel may have been the better entry point). Denise Crosby feels similarly adrift, while Fred Gwynne is a delight, lathering every line in that wonderful backwoods Maine accent. 

Maybe I’m being too harsh. The performances are serviceable and competent; it’s just that they don’t feel as engaged as Lambert’s direction. They’re performances for a more middle-of-the-road horror movie and don’t create characters who are willing to plumb the depths of this disturbing material. By the time Midkiff is carrying yet another body to the woods, he seems less undone by grief and more just going through the motions because he’s in a horror movie. His performance never seems to match the movie he’s in, which keeps Pet Sematary from feeling like a truly human bit of horror. But there are moments when it gets close. 

Agree or disagree? Comment! 

Previous King-O-Ween entries:

• Creepshow

• Cujo

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