One of my odder quirks for the longest time is that, while I was never much for horror movies, I did enjoy the hell out of horror novels. Why? I have no idea. I think the fact that I could control the pace of my reading but I can’t exactly do that with a movie is the biggest reason. Or so I thought. I know I have gotten more into horror movies in recent years, and some of my favorite experiences on screens these days are good horror movies, emphasis on good. When they aren’t that good, well, then I get something like the 2019 version of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. I mean, I had read the novel when I was in my 20s, but that movie just didn’t do a lot for me.
Maybe the 1989 version, currently on Netflix, would turn out better for me.
The Creed family are moving into a new home in a more rural area, just off what turns out to be a far too-busy roadway. Seriously, if this movie does one thing right, it’s that it shows large trucks frequently passing the house. Regardless, dad Louis (Dale Midkiff) was just hired to be a resident doctor at the University of Maine. His wife Rachel (Denise Crosby) is very supportive, and he has two adorable kids. There’s daughter Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and toddler son Gage (Miko Hughes), the standard precocious children, and Ellie has a cat named Church. Across the street is farmer Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne, doing his best thick Maine accent), and he’s there to welcome the family, but also to warn them. See, when Church dies after being hit by a truck, there is way to bring him back before Ellie finds out by burying the cat’s body at a strange plot of land. Church will come back to life then, but he won’t quite be the same friendly pet he was before. And when another tragedy hits the Creed family, well, let’s just say that Louis doesn’t seem capable of learning lessons.
That’s actually something I thought about as I watched this movie. Yes, it would have been sad to just let the dead stay dead, but even the decaying ghost of a dead jogger keeps saying how it’s better than the alternative. So, why did Jud tell Louis about the pet cemetery that brings the dead back to life? I am going to have to reread King’s novel and see if there’s anything like so much of a hint of an explanation for that, but I suppose the cemetery itself influences people to keep the legend going. Jud knows firsthand that nothing that comes back from there comes back as it used to be, and they always come back at least a little evil. I can maybe chalk up Louis’s insistence on continuing to try to shock and grief, but that doesn’t explain Jud’s telling Louis in the first place. And King wrote the screenplay for this movie, so it’s not like he was hands off. He even cameos as a minister at a funeral.
Regardless, I actually found the movie to be not all that good. It is standard fare for an 80s horror movie, I suppose, but that doesn’t really work for me as much as it may have had I seen it when it was new. Everything in this movie seems to be cranked up to 11, and not in a good way. Performances are often overwrought, people react in ways that don’t seem like the way real people react, and some of the scenes meant to be scarier seemed more silly than frightening.
However, I will give director Mary Lambert some credit: there are some very effective moments in this movie. Dead jogger Victor Pascow’s commentary and appearances often seem more comedic than anything else, but some of the moments when he just appeared or disappeared as needed were very effective. And while the 2019 version flipped which of the two Creed children died in the highway, I chalked it up at the time to how hard it is to get a toddler to emote as opposed to an older child. This version is faithful to King’s original, and it may have done the unlikely: it got some scary performances out of both a toddler and a cat. True, there may have been more than one cat, but as a cat owner, I know first hand they don’t take direction well. Much of the last twenty minutes, particularly when Gage and Church go after Jud, are rather effective whenever it isn’t obvious that Midkiff is wrestling with a doll standing in for a child. Then again, maybe it looked more real in 1989 on a movie screen than it does on my 4K TV. That said, this wasn’t all that great for me, but I will admit I liked it better than the 2019 version. I’ll take unintentional camp over dull any time.
Grade: C
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