While it didn’t get a lot of love back in the day (and
judging by reactions to today’s film, that feeling persists), Mary Lambert’s
Pet Sematary is a fucking great horror flick and one of the better Stephen King
adaptations. Having King himself penning the screenplay certainly helped, but
as a look at how people react to grief and why it is vitally important to come
to terms with that grief, it is a seriously intense ride, if an occasionally
goofy one.
I’d argue the point in remaking the story in the first place, but
considering the recent crop of King adaptations and their combined consistency,
I’m not entirely against the idea. Hell, this one has an uncredited David
Kajganich working on the script, and given how well he did with last year’s
remake of Suspiria, this could turn out good. However, as I’m about to get
into, this film ends up being a mish-mash of underperforming, overperforming
and just outweirding the original and not all in good ways.
