Rating: 2/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 41/52 | Zombie
The Creeds move to Ludlow, Maine. Rachel and her daughter Ellie see kids in animal masks walking through the woods, carting a dead dog. Ellie follows them to a place labeled Pet Sematary.
Louis, Rachel’s husband, works in an ER. When a teenager dies on him, the teenager comes back and warns him about crossing the border between life and death. In a dream that night, the teenager guides him to Pet Sematary, warning him not to go beyond the graveyard.
The Creeds have a cat named Church (short for Winston Churchill). Their neighbor Jud finds Church dead and tells Louis. He also tells Louis about a way to bring Church back. Surprise, it involves going beyond the Pet Sematary.
I saw the 1989 adaptation at a babysitter’s house, and the scene with Gage stuck with me for years afterward. Since I saw it at a young age, comparing the two movies is impossible to do with clarity.
This adaptation remains mostly faithful to the novel, with a few significant changes to surprise those familiar with the source material and the original movie. It doesn’t change much, so I don’t care either way.
The problem is that this movie lacks energy. I didn’t realize you could adapt this material so lifelessly. Each story beat just sort of happens. None of the scares land and none of the performances are memorable.
Did I watch this because I have a crush on Amy Seimetz? Maybe! God bless her—she acts the hell out of this movie. She used her salary from this movie to make She Dies Tomorrow, which I highly recommend.
But yeah, this isn’t very good.