Pet Sematary

Gwynne is the anchoring presence as a classically dry, laconic New Englander who seems to know some terrible secret. Elliot Goldenthal has composed a helpfully ominous score, as moody as vintage Bernard Herrmann, and Peter Stein's cinematography is superbly varied, from the bright hues of a glossy magazine to the dark shadows of the charnel house. No question about it, Pet Sematary is a handsomely produced film.

As time goes on, and more King comes to the screen, The Shining, once widely disparaged, looks better and better. At least that film translated some of King's terror; subsequent adaptations, Pet Sematary included, do little more than animate the gore. [24 Apr 1989, p.C6]

No film about a scalpel-wielding three-year-old psycho zombie could be entirely devoid of shocks. But reams of tedious exposition, about a children's pet 'sematary' and the magical resurrecting properties of an Indian burial ground, stretch patience and credulity to their limits, while Lambert fails to exploit the potential of the novel's best set pieces.

Had the film version of Pet Sematary, adapted straightforwardly by King himself from the novel, and directed with horrifying ineptitude by Mary Lambert (Siesta), been any good, it would have been a sizzling shockeroonie, in that it deals, to borrow King's italicized style, with things best left undealt with, notably resurrected murderous children and the terrors instilled by terminal illness. [24 Apr 1989]

Part of the reason Pet Sematary is so pedestrian is that its leads - Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby - are uncharismatic. And director Mary Lambert, of Siesta and music video fame, doesn't know how to build and pace her material. [21 Apr 1989, p.46]

Pet Sematary marks the first time Stephen King has adapted his own book for the screen, and the result is undead schlock dulled by a slasher-film mentality – squandering its chilling and fertile source material.

One of the problems is that King usually writes about cliche subjects so well that you don’t notice the hackneyed aspects of his books, and so when all the character detail, precise backgrounding and elaborate plot setting-up mechanisms are pruned away, all you get is a dumb TV movie with characters doing insanely stupid things to prolong the agony.

The earliest I can ever watch this movie again is around 2040 when my son reaches adulthood.

After multiple viewings this film grew on me quite a bit. It's atmospheric, doesn't have annoying jump scares, cool practical effects, and a bangers end credit song by the Ramones! Good stuff

I wanted to watch Pet Sematary after listening about it's remake and knowing that it's based on Stephen King's novel. The concept of the movie was good but the execution was not good. The story had a lot of potential but it was made just as a simple creepy movie. The acting was normal, the horror element was zero and creepiness was too much. The reasoning for some scenes were not given, which arose a lot of questions. What this movie was just a story which was trying to be a horror movie but failed miserably to become a horror movie. Overall, you can watch this movie for a different experience but don't expect too much from it.

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This film relies on the worst dad and husband like ever to push the dumb plot forward and over a cliff to crash and burn. That guy was painfully his own dumb worst enemy.