Pet Sematary

Sometimes dead is better.

   Based on a novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary the movie was released in 1989.  It's the story of Louis and Rachel Creed, who move with their two small children to a beautiful house very close to a main thoroughfare for semi trucks.  They must have gotten a really good deal because their house is way too close.  It has to have effected the property value.

   Anyway, even after their only son is almost run down in the street within ten minutes of their arrival, the Creeds neglect to put up a fence between their children's home and the obviously deadly street.  Fred Gwynne, who played Herman Munster, plays their kindly widower neighbor, Jud Crandall.  Jud proves himself to be incredibly unhelpful as he befriends the Creeds.

   Louis is a doctor, and wouldn't you know it, on his very first day of work some dumb college kid gets run down by a car.  He's obviously a lost cause, but somehow, even with brain matter exposed, he manages to hold a conversation with Louis with his final breaths.  Victor Pascow warns Louis about "sour ground" and how men's hearts are stonier.  Not really knowing what that means, and assuming it is just the demented ramblings of someone whose brains are no longer contained in his skull, Louis shakes it off.  Pascow continues to reappear to the whole family, warning them about sour ground.

   Eventually, because they barely even tried to prevent it, the Creeds' cat, Church, is plowed down in the road while Rachel and the kids are out of town.  Jud, being the friendly neighborhood idiot that he so obviously is, takes Louis to an Indian burial ground in the hills behind the Pet Sematary.  "Each buries his own," he tells Louis, and smokes a cigarette while he watches him to all the work.  He won't tell Louis exactly what is going to happen, which seems rude, but Louis finds out when his cat reappears, muddy and smelling awful.  Jud knew all along that things buried up in that burial ground don't come back quite right, but doesn't bother to warn Louis until after the cat's already come back.  With glowing eyes and the ability to walk through locked doors, Church proves himself to be a downright dead kitty asshole.  Rachel and the children return from Chicago, and the only indication they give that they suspect something is up with the family cat is that he smells a little funny.

   After their laundry lady commits suicide, Rachel reveals that death really effects her because her sister died when she was eight.  Zelda was completely insane by the time she succumbed to spinal meningitis, twisted up and trapped in the back bedroom.  Zelda's played by a dude, and she is completely messed up.

   Shortly after, Rachel and Louis's small son toddles into the road again because even after their cat died it's like they really don't know about fences.  This time they're not so lucky and they have to bury their three-year-old in a tiny coffin (and let's be honest, there is nothing sadder than a tiny coffin).  Stephen King presides over the funeral, because he's Stephen King, that's why.  Louis spots an opportunity to repair his crumbling family and attempts to use cursed ground to make up for their parental negligence.  He buries Gage in the Indian burial ground, with disastrous results.

   Really, the villain here, however unwittingly, is Jud.  He introduces Louis to the Indian burial ground, neglects to warn him about the effects of burying anything there, lies when asked if anyone's buried a human there, and is just generally really unhelpful.  To the point of being malicious.

   Almost as long-winded as one of Stephen King's novels (he wrote the screenplay), Pet Sematary is scary... eventually.  It takes forever to get there.  It's probably easy to write a five-hundred page novel in a week and a half on speed.  Honestly, King's novels went downhill after he got clean.  Anyway, Pet Sematary gets three out of five scalpels.