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Movie Reviews -
Horror and Gore
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Written by Matthew J. DeReno
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Sunday, July 11, 2010 05:37 PM |
 Pet Sematary is campy, yet somehow strangely entertaining flick bordering on total schlock and a complete waste of time. It is not a good haunted house flick, but it is entertaining. There is something of Stephen King’s trademark touches on the movie, which saves it from total collapse (as well there should be, since he wrote the screenplay as well as the book this film is based upon). The presence of legendary actor Fred Gwynne (a.k.a. Herman Munster) really helped rescue it from total failure as well.
As the film opens, a new family is arriving in a rural Maine town. Quite an original opening for a haunted house film, eh? The father of the family is Louis Creed (Midkiff), an MD, who is relocating his tribe here to become the new town doctor. The Creeds settle on a house that is by the side of a dangerous road (and not a friend to man). Foreshadowing is quite heavy as large powerful trucks race along this highway.
They get to know their neighbor, Jud Crandall (Gwynne), who is introduced after “corralling” the little toddler Gage Creed (Hughes) who wandered across the highway in what is the first in a series of gross acts of parental negligence. The young girl, perhaps six or seven, Ellie Creed (Berdahl) is riding a tire swing when she notices a path in the woods. A short while later, Crandall tells them about a pet cemetery and Indian burial ground located at the end of the path.
A short while later, Louis Creed, is treating a car accident victim named Victor Pascow. Pascow dies on the operating table with half his head looking like it exploded. That night, in what is seemingly a dream, Pascow visits Louis, warning him about the burial ground. He tells him “The ground is sour.”
Soon, Church, Ellie Creed’s beloved cat, is presumably flattened by one of those large speeding trucks we saw earlier. Meanwhile, Ellie, her mother Rachel, and brother Gage, are in Chicago visiting family. Louis is distraught over the prospects of explaining Church’s death to Ellie. Ellie asks him on the phone how her cat is doing. Louis lies about it and says he is fine.
Jud, believing that Ellie is not ready for the death of a loved pet, takes Louis to a burial ground beyond the pet cemetery they visited earlier. Together they bury the cat. The next day Church comes back to the house alive!
Or is he? There is clearly something different about the cat now. He is an evil cat. As evidence, he slashes the face of Louis Creed.
Later in the film, Gage Creed wanders across that same highway and so much for the toddler. Mercifully, we don’t actually see the kid get flattened.
As the film rolls on (no pun intended), we get a child’s horror perspective that only King can seem to master. The way he seems to evoke dread with phrases that are creepy in poetic ways; phrases that serve as themes throughout his stories. Alas, like many King stories, Pet Sematary is a complete story too; there are no loose ends left when the credits scroll.
I believe the real reason King is so popular as a horror story teller, aside from his wicked creativity, is because of his rigid attention to plot. I never read a King story that didn’t wrap up in a way that sort of answered all questions. This movie is no different. Most fans may not bother to articulate such a reason for liking his stories; surely so-called “serious writers” balk at ascribing brilliance to King, but people like stories that are complete because such fundamentally sound stories strike chords with us; they ring true. King completes his stories.
In a King story, you can count on one thing, everything gets resolved in sort of a ratcheted-up, grand finale of blood and guts, much like in his signature Carrie story. His themes come together, though they are very schlocky themes, but they do tie up all the neck nooses and all bodies get dropped that should get dropped. The same goes for Pet Sematary.
There is some subtlety to the film too. Ellie is the family daughter that first discovers the trail that leads to the pet cemetery by first seeing it from the perspective of a tire swing that abruptly breaks. Was it the evil of the pet cemetery that made the swing break? Immediately we are learning from fear through the eyes of this child. Even though the father is essentially the main character of the film, the daughter is the true POV character. That subtlety enhances this movie and is a result of good story technique.
There is good word play in this flick as well. The phrases which turn up time and again are “Sometimes dead is better,” “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier,” and “The boundary was not meant to be crossed... The ground is sour.”
Freddy Gwynne, as Jud, was simply great. His the ideal sort of friendly, yet weird old man in the neighborhood that knows all the legends; knows all the secrets the town has to offer. He speaks in portentous sentences. After showing the Creeds the pet cemetery, he asks Ellie if she really knows what a graveyard is. The six year old (or so) looks up at him in fear. He tells her: “It is a place where the dead speak.”
What I liked about that part is that once again we are seeing Jud not really through the eyes of the doctor but the eyes of Ellie. Fred Gwynne really made this film interesting. If not for him, Pet Sematary could really have been a major bomb. Gwynne, perhaps forever typecast as Herman Munster, was the perfect choice for the mysterious old man in the rickety house across the street.
A few words on Gwynne. Gwynne really hit a stride here, and it was even a pleasure to see him a few years later as the judge in My Cousin Vinny. It was sad he passed away not even five years after Pet Sematary from pancreatic cancer. In some ways, the line Jud said about what a cemetery really is comes to mind, but with a twist: Do you know what old movies are? Old movies are where the dead speak!
The beauty of the silver screen is we can revisit old films, and hear those great actors, like Fred Gwynne, live again.
Other scenes I enjoyed included the funeral of Gage Creed. The father-in-law that hated the doctor called him a child killer and threw him a right hook. They fall over and knock open the coffin lid and Gage’s body comes flopping out momentarily. If that is not trademark King going over the top, I am not sure what is.
Alas, there is a lot of schlock to deal with in Pet Sematary. The other actors in this film are wholly forgettable, even the child actor (Miko Hughes). Though it hard to blame a toddler for poor acting, I will do just that. He was like a doll with an evil face. I almost thought he was fake. Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed did nothing to detract to the film, but didn’t necessarily help it at all. Densie Crosby was serviceable as the distraught mother, though in these films you would think there would have been some sort of gratuitous, ah, well, I won’t even go there. The Victor Pascow ghost was sort of, eh, incredibly cheesy. When he first turned up in Creed’s dreams, it really seemed campy if not downright laughable. The production values were ho-hum and there was little imagination in translating the the book to the big screen. Surely they could have come up with something more frightening than a cat with glowing eyes?
Pet Sematary as a read is a good horror story. Unfortunately, it is a lousy movie with some entertaining moments. It could have been much, much better if done with more imagination, better production values, and better actors across the board. There is one notable exception: Fred Gwynne makes this film worth watching. If he were not in it, I would say get out the spade shovel and bury this movie six feet under.
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