Pet Sematary
Paramount Pictures
Some of my favorite horror classics have been rebooted and Pet Sematary is no exception. The original 1989 adaptation is as cheesy and ridiculous as you would expect, while still packing in some truly iconic moments. It featured an innocent performance from three year old Miko Hughes, a supporting performance from Munsters alum Fred Gwynne, and a creepy interpretation of spinal meningitis’ effects on the human body. While Miko Hughes was far too cute to ever actually be threatening that was the point of the original story. King is adamant that everything that brings you joy should feel threatening in some way (toddlers, clowns, literary fangirls, cars, etc.). In this adaptation there’s little peace to subvert as the house and grounds are dark from the get go, and the mother is haunted to the nth degree before anyone even goes into the ground.
In this version the blonde headed toddler is not the demon hell spawn, it’s his older sister, Ellie. There’s nothing altogether shocking about this change as it’s in the trailer and poster. The filmmakers eschewed the corny premise of a toddler stabbing people for depressing, bleak landscapes and long moronic monologues. No disrespect to Jeté Laurence who plays Ellie, as she is a child who is early in her career, but her undead performance was laughable. By that I mean I, and everyone in the theater, started laughing as soon as she started talking. I wholly blame the filmmakers who gave up any tension or horror in the preceding sequences and instead made this poor child actor monologue. Leads Jason Clarke and Amy Siemetz don’t do much better, as Clarke hams it up repeatedly and Siemetz feels like a wet blanket bereft of any characteristic except meekness. I’ve seen Clarke in other high budget faire and he’s done particularly well, so I have to assume, again, that this rests with the filmmakers. John Lithgow is the only bright spot in the entire film, if only because I love him so very much. He’s a little hammy, but of all the characters, he seemed like the only one who was vaguely threatening, and he was a good guy!
The effects didn’t add much to the film. When they wend their way through the backwoods and stand in the misty forest it felt very fake and over the top. I didn’t get any feeling of tension or dread when any of the buried family came back from the brink. Besides Victor Pascow (Obssa Ahmed), whose brains are hanging out of his head for good measure, there wasn’t all that much satisfying gore. The most iconic moment of the film was completely ruined by the fact that it was done by someone who didn’t seem menacing or all that scary.
What made the original so good was that it created a feeling of fear in its audiences. Zelda was scary, not because she was a heavily CGI-ed girl in bed but because she was coming to take your health away. When the scalpel got used you felt scared because, in a toddler’s hands, it could come from any which way. I did not feel terror when watching a blueish little girl twirl in her living room, or a cat sitting on a baby. I waited and waited for horror, but in the end I was just one of several people snickering in the audience, unable to sit quietly for another second.
