Pet Sematary

I can't say I was directly expecting it, but Pet Sematary is a great honest-to-goodness horror film. It takes the essentials from King's premise, and isn't afraid to play with them in such a way that the result is surprising even to someone who knows it, yet the outcome remains 100% King. During a few scenes there was a completely sepulchral silence in a reasonably full theater, which I think says it all. I cared about the characters and as time went on I became uncertain of almost everything and enjoyed it immensely. Jason Clarke fits the role perfectly and I enjoyed him as much as John Lithgow, the music by horror expert Christopher Young is also good, you hardly notice it while watching but it's worth a separate listen. I'm just supremely satisfied, despite the fact that I was looking forward to the Frankenstein madness of the book and got something completely different (but just as good). It all culminated in an extremely tense finale in a misty graveyard... and the ending! It wasn't a Stephen King ending, it was a Richard Bachman ending! (04/13/2019)

If any of Stephen King’s books are made into a movie, usually, the result cannot be bad. Except, maybe, when the filming is made by a bungler, the result can be quite a screw-up. What sometimes happens is that an average movie is made from a quality theme, but that depends on the abilities of the makers – or the lack thereof. Pet Sematary, for example, was not filmed for the first time, but I cannot say that there is anything different or unique about it. I think that it is a standard horror movie, which does not even make you scared, because the thought of fear is somewhat turned upside down. Also, it is kind of boring and without the last half an hour, I would probably rate it with even less stars. (01/08/2020)

A routine flick without a clear-cut concept that might amuse some non-discerning popcorn-eating teenagers (it contains both jump scares and gore), Pet Sematary will disappoint or anger fans of the original book, as well as thinking fans of the genre. It has some powerful moments (the mom being hugged by her daughter) and nice visuals (the burying ground), but it is also lethally dumb and, what’s more, it lacks any kind of director’s vision along the lines of “I want to preserve the original character of the book by making it into an equally interesting film adaptation”. The cast is alright, the familial ties and the initial atmosphere of the chilling locations work, but all of that is undermined by the further development of the movie. (04/17/2019)

I'm not an uncritical King fan, yet I gave the new version of Pet Sematary a chance. Sadly, King adaptations will probably never get out from under their shadows again. It's still all about there being one better film for every twenty crap ones, and really only rarely is there a work worthy of the viewer's remembering. That's how I fondly remember Carrie and Misery. A lot of the other films were bad. (12/31/2019)

This is an uninteresting and badly made King adaptation, which perhaps no one wished for anyway, as its existence is unjustified when compared with the honorable thirty-year-old version by Mary Lambert. This movie has no penmanship, no energy. The makers of this did not manage to come up with anything interesting, on the contrary, in the parts where they tried to deviate slightly from the book and introduce something new, the movie begins to be so stupid and tawdry to such an unbearable degree that it is just a smack in the face. The movie therefore fails to evoke any sort of emotion in the audience, there are no surprises, just nothing. Finally, the final smack in the face will come during the end credits, when a cover version of "Pet Sematary" from the original movie starts playing, as if the makers put an underlying message that it is just cool to make a tedious and sexless remake of what used to be good years ago today and we should just put up with it. However, I am not going to. (08/27/2019)