Force Fed Films: Stephen King's Pet Sematary (1989)

For those of you who have been reading my work for the whole year, you may recall that every few months Puneet threatens to make me watch House of Wax. Not even the original, but the remake with Paris Hilton. Today was nearly that day, but he changed his pick at the final hour to Stephen King's Pet Sematary. That was a close one! I remember trying to watch this when I was much younger, but I never made it through the movie because it was too freaky for me then. I'm sure I've since seen far worse, so I wasn't worried this time around. What I had done though, in place of the movie, I read the book, so I at least knew what I was in for. Hit the jump to see if I made it all the way through this time.


Louis (Dale Midkiff) and Rachel Creed (Denise Crosby) have moved to the countryside to live their dreams and raise their two young children, Ellie and Gage. They are soon greeted by their sole neighbour from across the street, Jud Crandell (Fred Gwynne) who warns them to watch their kids and pets around the road, because it's used as a main line for transport trucks which frequently come barreling through. It all seems peaceful and serine, but the woods hide a strange place; the Pet Sematary. As Jud puts it, "That's one mean road alright... uses up a lot of animals, dogs and cats mostly." But there's an even darker secret that most don't know about, beyond the fallen trees, through the howling woods and along a steep cliff face. Beyond all those, lays an Indian burial ground. But you should never bury anything there in its rocky ground, for the soil has long since turned sour with evil. Sometimes though, the pain of death will make you do crazy things. Especially, if it's a child.

Jud shows the Creed family the Pet Sematary

The best part of Pet Sematary is the atmosphere it carries throughout the entire movie. It's really hard to describe, and I'm not sure if I felt it simply because I'd read the book in my youth. Whatever it was, the movie made me feel like it had a thick creepiness to it. Almost as if I could feel it in the air.

I'd like to attribute the atmosphere to the characters, but to be honest there was only one I really liked, and that was Jud, played amazingly by Fred Gwynne. You may recognize him, as he used to play Herman Munster on TV. In this he sounds quite different. The way he spoke, with a sort of a drawl, added a lot to the film. I like to compare the way he talks to the way the characters in FireFly talk, with a sort of an old-world slang that just gives a richness to the character. At one point Jud recommends that Louis get their cat, Church, fixed. "Fixed cat don't tend to wander. Cause all the time crossing back and forth on that road, his luck'll run out." While Jud enriches the character of the movie, sadly the same can't be said about the rest of the cast.

The Indian burial ground

Another thing that helped the movie was the great animal work they did with Church (short for Winston Churchill) the cat. He was always jumping in at the right moment, or sitting in just the right spot as the shot panned. Church even slept on his side beside the little girl in bed, and they tuck him in with the girl. All he does is look at them a bit, and then he puts his head back down to seemingly go to sleep. Later, after an unfortunate accident involving the road and those damned trucks, Church comes back an entirely different cat. Hissing and jumping at Louis. They add a great eye effect that looks like how cat's eyes reflect light, but it's happening almost all the time. It's really pretty creepy if you ask me. Go away Hell-cat!

"The cat came back, the very next day..."

It's not just the pets and the effects of the burial grounds that are creepy and weird in this movie. There's also a ghost that haunts them on an off too. He is a student that dies early in the film, and Louis, being a doctor at the university, is with him when he passes, and this links him to Louis. He looks absolutely hideous, with his one dead eye and his skull forever split open. If you're curious, he's the dude you half-see on the movie poster/dvd cover. I quite liked him too, especially at the end when he's clearly having an effect on the world and people around him. Even more interesting, is that he doesn't act the way you might think he would based on how he looks. He's only a minor part of the film, but a neat one regardless.

Well, there you have it. I liked Jud, Church, and the brain bashed-in ghost the most. The other actors weren't really very good, the little girl was pretty poor, and so was the dad, Louis. When Louis is having conversations with Jud, every one of Jud's lines are full of character and emotion and colour, and then all of Louis' lines just seem lifeless and phoned-in. The only time Louis starts to get interesting is in the last few minutes of the movie when he starts going crazy, and has to clean up his mess from the burial grounds. I suppose I should also mention the little kid Gage. When the movie was made, he was only 3, and it's pretty amazing what they got him to do here.

Overall I enjoyed Pet Sematary. It has some really good parts, but some really dull parts too. The concepts and ideas are all great and terrifically creepy, and it has an atmosphere that actually had me scared a few times. If you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend it, with one warning that it's a bit of a slow start, but the ramped up ending really makes it work in my opinion. Stephen King does it again!