2 out of 5

Directed by: Mary Lambert

I don’t mind some dumb in my horror movies. A lot of great ones can be a good degree of dumb; or rather, said more kindly, horror movies have more allowance for style over substance, with the former’s effect on atmosphere maybe adding to the latter; or sometimes there’s just such passion in a project that it can will itself past other flaws.

But it’s a balance.

Pet Sematary means well, but it’s conflicted in its execution, starting out with a very classically 80s impressionistic style, but then indulging in some of the era’s other trends: gore, dream logic, and Stephen King-ness – though the latter gets a pass, since it’s his script from his book, and he apparently was pretty adamant it remain in line with his written words.

The Creed family – mom (Denise Crosby), doctor dad (Dale Midkiff), baby Gage (Miko Hughes) and youth Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) – move to a new, rural home so’s pops can start his new MD job at a school. The folksy neighbor, Jud (Fred Gwynne) warns them about the blazing tractor-trailer traffic on the main road – right after Gage almost gets smacked by a truck – and then also warns them about that path there o’er yonder, don’t go down there, y’all.

Later, Jud takes them down that path to show the Creeds the local pet cemetery, filled with childhood pets (and kid-scrawled grave markers) taken by the trucks on that main road. And when dad is home alone for the weekend, and finds that Ellie’s cat, Church, has met its roadly fate, Jud further explains that there’s more to this pet cemetery, thanks to Indian burial ground magicks…

A totally valid setup, tapping into a good cross-section of childhood and adulthood fears, and giving the film license for effecting its creeps with just a dash of the “other” – taking a pet, and making it… off. Director Mary Lambert employs zooms and cuts and good sound design to piece together a superficially happy family, and pokes and prods at that with Jud’s unnerving down-home vibe, and some poetic visuals surrounding the pet cemetery and the events that lead Midkiff’s character there.

Midkiff is definitely watchable, though the extremes of the character’s emotions elude the actor; Crosby similarly is rather stiff, but her character is also written very poorly, as a weak nag, with pointless trauma tossed in for effect. And Gwynne’s accent is more distracting than charming. These are B-movie details, but they’re not wholly responsible for derailing the film. Moreso, it’s just the story, and how quickly the tale goes off into King tropes like ghost guides and scary kids, but it does this… pointlessly. As mentioned regarding Crosby’s character’s background, similarly, nothing feels very intrinsic to the core plot; there are vague explanations for what motivates Jud to encourage the use of the cemetery, when he’s very aware of its evil potential, but this stuff is never given any real attention, and that holds for pretty much every other detail. I’m sure the book has more connective tissue, but on screen, we have the idea (bury your pet here and they come back to life!) and then some imagery for the ending, and everything else is filler just to get to those pieces.

The movie also goes on and a couple of logical stopping points, which kind of underlines the above problem. I’d suspect someone writing a script who wasn’t as married to the source material may’ve made it more filmic; Lambert does a fair job of giving it visual gravity, the movie just deflates of most tension pretty early on, surviving on some visual shocks and chuckles at Gwynne’s accent.