Pet Sematary (1989)

Official trailer

Pet Sematary is Mary Lambert’s 1989 American horror film adapted from Stephen King’s 1983 novel, depicting a Chicago physician who moves his family to rural Maine and discovers an ancient burial ground behind their new home that returns the dead to life, with consequences that escalate across the running time. Dale Midkiff plays Louis Creed. Denise Crosby plays Rachel Creed. Fred Gwynne plays Jud Crandall. Brad Greenquist plays Victor Pascow. Miko Hughes plays Gage Creed. Blaze Berdahl plays Ellie Creed. Stephen King himself wrote the screenplay.

Paramount Pictures distributed the film for theatrical release in April 1989. Pet Sematary was the first Stephen King novel adapted with King writing the screenplay himself. That gives the film a distinct authorial position in the larger King-adaptation tradition. Few eighties horror films disturb me the way Pet Sematary does. It’s mean, it’s sad, and it refuses to let anybody off the hook. I just wish a stronger director had been behind the camera, because the material is so much better than the filmmaking around it.

For the late 1980s, Pet Sematary is an exceptionally dark mainstream horror film and a King adaptation deeply committed to the source material’s distinct thematic tone. King’s novel had been considerably delayed in publication because King himself believed the material was too dark for general audiences. The film treats the underlying material with comparable commitment, refusing to soften the source’s particular child-death-and-resurrection horror or its closing-act familial-violence resolution. The cumulative effect is a relentlessly bleak mainstream horror production.

The Stephen King Screenplay

King’s decision to adapt his own novel produced certain advantages and limitations. The screenplay maintains the novel’s particular thematic commitments with serious fidelity, including the closing-act revelations that the production company might have preferred to soften. King refused to compromise the underlying material. That gave the film its distinct dark tone.

The disadvantages of author-as-screenwriter adaptation include difficulty in cinematic translation of literary elements.

Some of the novel’s most psychologically affecting material, especially Louis Creed’s interior reflection on death, mourning, and the meaning of family, doesn’t translate directly to dramatic visualization. The film consequently feels emotionally distant where the novel felt overwhelming. The trade-off is real, with the production’s strengths and weaknesses both traceable to King’s authorial control.

That distance is my biggest problem with the film. Too much of Louis’s grief stayed inside King’s prose, and on screen he mostly reads as a man making terrible decisions in a hurry. I needed to feel the pain behind those decisions, and the film rarely lets me.

Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall

Fred Gwynne’s Jud Crandall is the film’s strongest single performance, and he’s the part of the film I enjoy most. Jud is the elderly Maine neighbor who introduces the Creed family to the burial-ground mythology and who bears moral responsibility for their destruction.

Gwynne’s Maine voice rings true in a way the rest of the production sometimes lacks. Because I believe every word out of his mouth, his warnings land twice as hard.

Gwynne was best known for The Munsters television series and his initial casting against the dark-horror material represented a considerable departure from his established public image. The performance proved successful: Gwynne’s Jud is warm in his early appearances and tragic in his late-film recognition of the disaster he’s enabled. The cumulative effect gave the film its strongest emotional anchor.

The Child-Death Material

The film’s depiction of toddler Gage Creed’s road-accident death and later resurrection-and-violence represented a major mainstream-horror taboo violation in 1989. Most contemporary horror productions softened or eliminated child-death material entirely. King’s novel had treated the material with full commitment, and the film follows the novel’s particular willingness to engage with the darkest possible material.

Miko Hughes’s performance as the resurrected Gage is the most disturbing thing in the film. The child actor handles the shift between affectionate toddler and homicidal revenant with surprising skill, and the climax refuses to give the audience any comfortable distance. I think that final stretch is the reason the film has the reputation it does, and it’s what holds my rating at a 7 when the direction keeps dragging it down.

Is Pet Sematary worth watching?

I give Pet Sematary a 7. Fred Gwynne, King’s refusal to soften his own story and that brutal final act give it a darkness most studio horror of the decade wouldn’t touch. Mary Lambert’s flat direction is what holds it back, and I’d love to see what a real horror stylist could have done with this script. If you’re a Stephen King fan, it’s required viewing. If children in peril are more than you can take, stay far away.

Frequently Asked Questions