Pet Sematary (1989) Directed by Mary Lambert
Sticking to the right phantasmagorical delirium and finding a storytelling path through the doleful atmospherics of Stephen King’s morbid tale, this faulty film adaptation of Pet Sematary cements its rowdy funereal mythology as a poorly acted piece of late eighties horror that happens to be every bit as strikingly memorable as the genre’s major classics. How does it do it? Well, no matter how much superfluity of tragedy histrionics can be found in Mary Lambert’s turgid direction, the film as a whole is a formidable beast creating creepy iconography.
The Creed family moves from Chicago to the small town of Ludlow. Louis (Dale Midkiff) and Rachel (Denise Crosby) with their little kids and their British shorthair Church quickly get used to the placid surroundings of their new home and befriend affable neighbor Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne) who gives them a tour of the dilapidated pet sematary just a few steps away. Technically this horror yarn should work, but King’s juvenile prose draws too much attention to itself when the otherworldly becomes so explicit at the same time that the pathos becomes implausibly malicious. Fred Gwynne is goofily wonderful in every bit of the film, and the nightmarish frenzy of intimate remembrances foreshadowing death and misfortune in the characters’ present provides facile but suspenseful entertainment.
This is one of the coolest bad movies of the eighties or maybe ever. Each viewing is better than the last – not necessarily better as a movie but as schlock – and its spine-tingling finale, invigorated by Miko Hughes’ ghoulish facial expressions and Elliot Goldenthal’s eerie score, never fails to blow me away. It concludes in an awkwardly moving and terrifying way, serving as a universal lesson that understanding death is as important as learning to let go. It’s trite lyricism but the story plays it out nicely, I just wish that, again, the performances would gesticulate the tragedy more like humans than caricatures.