Pet Sematary (1989)

Best movie of this year hands down!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

My partner and I have been having a King movie fest. We started by watching Firestarter then Carrie then the The Shining, and then we watched Pet Sematary. Wow. I know Firestarter is considered by some to be a terrible movie but it actually has a heart and an emotional centre which was very easy to get into. It's also directed really well I felt regardless that King dislikes it. Firestarter is a masterpiece compared to Pet Sematary! This is a laughable forgetful 80s horror movie.. the story and the movie were rubbish. It ripped off the The Amityville Horror soundtrack, then seemed to be trying to bring flavours of Nightmare on Elm Street 3 towards the end.. but it was such a pathetic story with the sidekick ghost and the completely illogical sequence of events when the kid comes back.. it reminded me of why I stopped reading Stephen King books after finishing the 21st one. Such 1 dimensional characters, often schmaltzy and relying on such stereotyped personalities. I'd heard that King absolutely hates Kubrik's Shining. I guess it must be difficult seeing someone take your schmaltzy 1 dimensional work, ignoring your repeated failings and crafting it into a suspenseful and a well directed movie! Stephen King is a writer whose stories only translate to screen well when a director completely ignores King's characterisations. Unfortunately I think the director here remained faithful to King's book as well as throwing in the cheap 80s schlock horror style, thus Pet Sematary ended up as junk. My partner and I both felt the same way about it.

I remember watching Pet Sematary as a kid on the television, back then they never cut the parts deemed too scary, I remember being terrified of the dark and empty rooms that year after watching this movie. Now that I am 24, this movie still manages to do that. The movie perfectly captured madness, sadness, loss in single moments. The back story and the myths in this movie are SO rich and enticing. The urban legends of the ground. The ghost that only Louis can see, looks horrifying. But is not the main antagonist. As a horror buff, this movie does a lot of things too well, sadly it wasn't a big hit back in it's day, but is should have been

I enjoy this movie, it is one of the better Stephen King movies. I watched it again tonight. The only thing that is unbelievable is when Louis digs Gage's body up. It is in one piece. I would think if someone that small got hit by a semi going at a high rate of speed, the body would be in several pieces. But despite that, it is a good movie.

Another Stephen King adaptation, with King as screenwriter this time. PET SEMATARY is the place in small-town America (where else?) where kids have been burying their pets for a century. Unfortunately, if pets are buried in a nearby Indian burial ground, they have a tendency to come back to life...A doctor, his wife, two children and pet cat move into the small town and are greeted by a local resident, Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne). That's right, it's Herman Munster himself, and he's the best thing in this film. A busy road soon kills the cat, and Jud takes Dr Creed down to the burial ground. It comes back from the dead, but of course, something's wrong...PET SEMATARY benefits from some true chills, especially from the dead cat and the creepy cemetery itself. Unfortunately these are the only scary things in the film. Fred Gwynne is always fun to watch and light relief comes from a ghost of a guy who had his head split open. Interesting the actor playing the ghost has gone on to star in some video games, including GABRIEL KNIGHT 2. The ghost keeps on popping up to offer advice which is typically silly and ill thought-out rubbish seemingly borrowed from AN American WEREWOLF IN London.The special effects aren't bad, either, and there are some delightfully gory moments. But when we come to the main cast...oh dear. The main actor just CANNOT ACT. He has an expressionless face throughout the film, even in the horror scenes. I was just crying out for him to scream or something, but no such luck. The puppets in THUNDERBIRDS have more expression than this guy, I think Dale Midkiff is his name. I'm not even going to call this guy an actor, because he cannot act. The corpses in the film were far better actors. The same, too, can be said for the actress who plays his wife, but she has a lesser role in the proceedings and is familiar as Tasha Yar from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. Sadly, this was one of my favourite King novels, and this film, with a better cast, could and should have been a lot better than it was.