{"id":12271,"date":"2019-04-09T16:04:46","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T20:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=12271"},"modified":"2019-04-09T16:04:46","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T20:04:46","slug":"better-off-dead-pet-sematary-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2019\/04\/better-off-dead-pet-sematary-2019.html","title":{"rendered":"Better Off Dead: “Pet Sematary” (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I have been looking forward for a very long time to this adaptation of the scariest (and saddest) Stephen King novel I\u2019ve ever read. The moment I saw the trailer, with the creepy procession of kids in animal masks and the huge smash cut to the truck roaring by, I thought, This might be good<\/em>. And the new movie is<\/em> good, in the exact way the old one (1989) was not good. Is that good enough?<\/p>\n

This adaptation, and especially Jason Clarke\u2019s performance as Dr. Louis Creed, made me realize for the first time something which maybe should\u2019ve been obvious: Pet Sematary<\/em> has essentially the same plotline as The Shining<\/em>. A family with subterranean troubles arrives in an isolated location where, under pressure both emotional and supernatural, the father is taken over by\u2013and gives himself willingly to\u2013something which will destroy everyone he loves. (This movie plays up the haunted-house element, the way the house itself seems to evoke visions and nightmares, making the Shining<\/em> parallel clearer.) The moment when Louis drugs the drink, and you can see in his eyes that something inside him has tipped over\u2013that\u2019s chilling. That\u2019s the good stuff. And because in this story the role of alcohol is played by grief, it\u2019s that much more harrowing and heartbreaking to watch Louis succumb to addiction.<\/p>\n

(This might be as good a place as any to say that there\u2019s a ton of violence against and threats to children in this movie, so don\u2019t see it if you don\u2019t want that.)<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s major flaw from my pov is that it relied on the Wendigo to get characters to do things they otherwise would know too much or love too well to do. Here, supernatural forces do play a role, but the Wendigo is more like Grady in the Overlook, a tempter who calls forth something desperate within. Whatever lives in the burial ground\u2013behind the pet cemetery, over the deadfall, through the mist and the creek full of bones, and up the narrow stone steps\u2013relies on purely human hungers to entice its victims. The script gets a tad bit heavyhanded about the way all the adults in this film hunger for dishonest happiness over hard truths; they\u2019d rather have the facsimile of love and family than the reality of loss.<\/p>\n

Pet Sematary<\/em> is relentlessly grim; it\u2019s unrelieved until the surpassingly creepy, vicious little final sound effect. (Such a nice twist on the 1989 version, and on the novel. Lots of the deviations from those versions are really smart here; and the final moment is also a good example of how well the film integrates 2019 technology into a story penned in the Reagan era.) When the credits roll you\u2019ll get a fun cover of the Ramones\u2019 \u201cPet Sematary.\u201d That\u2019s basically the only note of humor so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.<\/p>\n

The movie looks nice and spooky\u2013I could\u2019ve used even more of the creepy kids\u2019 procession, but the trip from the pet cemetery to the stony burial ground is great. Church the cat is all he should be, in both his incarnations. Church hiding in the cabinet is a lot<\/em> scarier than I would\u2019ve thought it could be. The racial implications of the \u201cancient Indian burial ground\u201d trope come even more to the fore, though without lecturing, by making Pascow a young black student while Judd is still a grizzled white man. (We get a glimpse of a news clipping about unresolved Indian land claims, and the idea that the Creed family owns<\/em> the burial ground is important I think, but the film trusts its audience enough to let us reach the Ravenous<\/em><\/a> \u201cwho should you have listened to?\u201d point on its own.) There might be some way to present the Zelda backstory visually in a way that doesn\u2019t dehumanize people with disabilities but this film once again failed to find it. Horror flicks that try to evoke disgust at normal human weaknesses will never be all right with me. But with that built-in exception, so much of this movie is what I wanted it to be. I gasped. I cringed. I cried!<\/p>\n

And yet\u2026 something felt lacking here, something that could take the movie from solid adaptation to minor classic: Kathy Bates in Misery<\/em>, or the asylum setting in Session 9<\/em>. This isn\u2019t about the movie\u2019s actual flaws (the pointless villain monologue about Zelda and Hell during the climactic mayhem, for example). I don\u2019t know, maybe I am demanding too much because I loved the book so much. Maybe I should be grateful that this isn\u2019t risible like the earlier attempt (\u201cThe growwwnd\u2026 is sow-wah!\u201d). If you see it, let me know what you thought.<\/p>\n

Unrelated spooky cat picture via Wikimedia Commons<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been looking forward for a very long time to this adaptation of the scariest (and saddest) Stephen King novel I\u2019ve ever read. The moment I saw the trailer, with the creepy procession of kids in animal masks and the huge smash cut to the truck roaring by, I thought, This might be good. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":12286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1408,119,322],"class_list":["post-12271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-cats","tag-horror","tag-stephen-king"],"yoast_head":"\nBetter Off Dead: "Pet Sematary" (2019)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I have been looking forward for a very long time to this adaptation of the scariest (and saddest) Stephen King novel I've ever read. 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