Dennis Widmyer
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A bloody ghost appears just out of frame repeatedly, giving you serious Toni Collette in Hereditary vibes.
Material that called for the grueling intensity of Ari Aster’s Hereditary plays closer to Blumhouse, down to the way Rachel’s traumatic backstory—her guilt about the death of her sister, twisted into awful shapes by her spinal meningitis—is mainly mined for jack-in-the-box jump scares.
But that movie is called Hereditary , not Pet Sematary , and if you’re hoping to see a film that channels the potency of the book, you’re not going to find it here.
Compare this to the painstakingly physical way Toni Collette’s character reacted to the loss of a child in last year’s Hereditary .
Kölsch and Widmyer imbue their film with a respect for the gravity of death that’s uncommon in the genre until recent years, though it stops short of dredging the murkiest depths of tragedy and despair as found in last year’s Hereditary , which will probably make it less polarizing with audiences as a result.
After the success of intense, uncompromising films like It Comes at Night and Hereditary , fans have been kicking around a term called “elevated horror.”
It’s impressive to think of how many adaptations we’ve seen of the stories by Stephen King to the point where some are now being remade.
After the success of It , it’s no wonder studios are scrambling to re-adapt more of Stephen King’s work.
"It" is the latest movie based on a book by Stephen King, an author who's stories have spawned more than 100 movies covering genres including horror, drama and sci-fi which began with “Carrie” in 1976.
Stephen King adaptations are thriving as of late – It and Gerald’s Game , off the top of my head – and Pet Sematary does the prolific suspense author proud.
It’s an arresting opening with stylistic echoes of The Shining (the cinematography is by Laurie Rose, the gifted British DOP who shot Ben Wheatley’s jittery genre masterpieces Kill List and A Field in England ).
Still, by tightening up the narrative, and building toward a shockingly bleaker ending than found in any King adaptation not called The Mist, this grittier and more concise version of Pet Sematary supplants its predecessor.
Had those themes, particularly the grief over losing a child, driven the movie, Pet Sematary could have been the horror movie equivalent of Manchester by the Sea, and honestly, that’s the movie I found myself bracing against, the movie I found myself dreading the most.