Pet Sematary
I did not know they still made horror movies like Pet Sematary. I do know they shouldn’t. Actually, I thought even the hackiest, shittiest filmmakers were more self-aware and more cognizant of what stories have been done to fucking death. I was wrong. Pet Sematary is old and stale, and yet played as straight as an arrow, like a movie made by an accountant given a bullet list. This is a paint-by-numbers pile of horseshit. No coloring outside the lines, just paint it like the instructions say. It moves like a turtle on fentanyl and tells a story less fresh than the sock you’d find under a teen boy’s bed.
Granted, Pet Sematary is based on a 36-year-old old Stephen King novel. Maybe it wasn’t all tired in 1983, but elements of it probably were. The movie has zombies and an ancient Indian burial ground with mystical powers. There is an old man out of a Scooby Doo episode, a haunted forest always covered in ground fog. And the movie’s only scares come from shit popping out, or screeches on the soundtrack. As it plods along, it hands out the jolts with the thriftiness of an extreme couponer giving her children allowance. Loud trucks honking horns or cats scowling are supposed to scare us. Creaking floorboards and open doors rattling in the wind are supposed to set the mood.
A perfect nuclear family (husband, wife, girl, boy) moves from busy, busy Boston to the quiet woods of Maine so that the ER doctor dad (Jason Clarke) can slow down and spend more time with his family. A word about Clarke: I don’t recognize him, but he looks like a generic one-hour TV drama dad, one who might occasionally cry. His performance here makes me think he’s the guy people hire because he works cheap, shows up on time and sometimes brings donuts to the set. It sure as hell isn’t because of his range. So, he’s Joe from Home Depot, but as an actor
The doctor bought 50 acres of woods without knowing shit about it. Because, you know, in this day and age, it’s so hard to find out anything about property. As the family quickly learns, there is a cemetery where kids bury their beloved pets back in the woods. Oh, also a giant wall that they are warned not to go past by the vaguely mysterious old man next door (John Lithgow) whose beard looks like a poodle’s ass: all white except brown where the shit comes out.
Despite the old man’s filthy beard, the young daughter befriends him and even does impromptu ballet for him. In fact, the new family quickly starts hanging hanging out with the weird-ass loner with the revolver in the open and smelly facial hair in the run-down house. It makes no sense, but very little of the actions in this movie does. It’s chock full of people going where they shouldn’t and doing stupid-fucking things no normal person would. I guess that’s the normal human response when you find yourself in a cliché.
When the daughter’s beloved cat dies, the creepy old man next door--the same one who warns them not to venture into the woods--says, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s haul that cat’s dead ass into the woods where it will be revived as a zombie. Little girls love that.”
The cat returns matted in blood and biting everything. The biting is nothing new for a cat; it’s what they all do. I once thought I’d get rich selling a cat calendar, so I used stray cats from the neighborhood. Every single one of those fucking felines scratched me up worse than a Japanese truck parked at the Starlight Lounge whenever I tried getting them into the tiny kitty bikinis. You know how God damn hard it is stretching a neoprene thong over a furry ass?
Once the cat comes back, it’s only a matter of time before a kid is going to die and the family is going to try to revive it. Maybe this would marginally make sense if directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer had set the tone or made any effort for us to see that the family had a strong bond, or even that tragedy in their past had made the prospect of losing a child unbearable. Maybe a previously lost child that had almost torn them apart. Instead, the characters are so fucking dull and bland thatit’s hard to feel sorry for them--or even believe them--when they make bad decision after bad decision. Rather, since I barely knew them, all I could do was think, “What jackasses.” I mean, seriously, as though it’s not weird enough for a cat to come back to life, the reality that it’s now vicious and pissed doesn’t cause the dad to even think twice.
When the daughter is revived, she is standard-issue demon-child. Imagine a Gymboree in a posh neighborhood where someone spiked the juice boxes with meth. She’s just an evil little killing machine, stabbing people with, maybe, super strength. I say maybe because sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t. And, she outsmarts the adults. Given the grownups here, that isn’t hard to do. The problem, though, is that even the dumbest of dumbfucks in the audience can think two steps ahead of a nine-year old. I wouldn’t have three pretty nice BMX bikes in our spare bedroom if I couldn’t.
Pet Sematary has no imagination and no creativity. It fails to go beyond the obvious and misses opportunities to be even remotely creepy. Hell, the ground where the cute dogs are buried doesn’t even matter even, though it could set the stage for a shitload of ickiness. Early in the movie there is a procession of kids in tattered animal masks hauling a dog out there in a wheelbarrow. The kids are never seen again, the mask imagery is barely touched, and their history with the forest is ignored. The movie could have benefited from their perspective: what horrors and promise do they believe lie in the woods?
The ending is neither climactic or surprising. Instead, Pet Sematary sort of limps to its end like a Doberman with arthritis. It curls up on a comfy bed and dies. The disappointments don’t even end there. Over the closing credits, a toothless and low-energy cover of the Ramones’ song "Pet Sematary" plays. I'd say it was the accountants who did this, but given everything other bad and obvious choice, probably not.
It’s a fucking turd, a tired collection of horror tropes served by the sort of people who think that’s good enough. Or maybe the best they can do. One Finger for Pet Sematary.