Stephen King's novels have always been ripe for film adaptations and, as a fan of much of his work, I have often looked forward to those adaptations with some trepidation. For every 'Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, Misery or The Green Mile there will be a low rent tawdry entry like Graveyard Shift or Maximum Overdrive.
The plot revolves around young doctor Louis Creed, who has accepted a cushy post at a local college and moves his family (wife, two children and cat) to small town Maine across the street from bucolic welcoming old neighbor Jud Crandall. The homey house faces a very busy highway where semis speed through at all hours of the day, while the back faces a dense forest wherein lies the Pet Sematary. A place where local children for generations have buried their pets, ergo the misspelled sign. When the family cat is killed on the road and Louis frets on breaking the news to the kids, Jud conveys a local secret that beyond the title place there exists an old Indian burial plot wherein the cat can be buried and resurrected. Unfortunately, the cat comes back markedly different and not in a good way, and that is only the first tragedy to befall the hapless Creed clan.
Pet Sematary is one of King's better novels filled with sympathetic, well-drawn characters, a sense of foreboding and atmosphere of dread, and a good idea of how to disconcert the reader and put them through the ringer. The Creed family and Jud are all likable. Even when they do arguably stupid actions, King makes you understand why they did it and the emotional toll that compelled such action.
Sadly this film adaptation is a mess. The film looks and feels cheap. The effects - from special effects to make-up to lighting - are phony and tacky looking. Director Mary Lambert - known mainly at this time for her efforts at music videos - has no idea how to develop atmosphere or character or suspense. The film snags some of the plot set pieces from the novel, but abandons any of the build-up or the character development that would make them have any emotional resonance. The whole effort feels rushed and you would be hard-pressed to remember it a week later.
The production is just a debacle - victim of both a badly thought out screenplay and lackluster direction. Louis's nocturnal visits from a young collegiate that was hit by a car and died on his first day of work should be nightmarish, but every time the guy shows up in his bad make-up and spouting dreadful lines, one cannot help but giggle. Ditto, another character's unexpected suicide is so badly rendered that it resulted in guffaws from my theater audience.
The characters that populate this landscape are barely sketches. With one notable exception, the acting is awful. Never once are any of them able to make you understand why they do what they do. Why does Jud convey the secret of the graveyard when he knows history has often repeated itself with tragedy? Why do Louis and Rachel stay in a house on a busy highway with their children? Why do they let the cat roam in such an environment? Who knows?
Fred Gwynne manages to rise above the material as the neighborly Jud. He is personable and sympathetic and makes you wish he were in a much better film.
Blaze Berdahl is not especially memorable as the Creed's daughter Ellie and Miko Hughes, while cute as a button, as the younger son Gage, just does not sell the film's latter portion at all. Then again, I am uncertain what young actor under this horrible direction could do it. What should be tragic and frightening somehow ends up being laughable.
Denise Crosby is abysmal as the overly emotional wife Rachel, who may as well have victim tattooed on her forehead. The sequences featuring her memories of dealing with her spinal meningitis-afflicted sister are dreadfully rendered.
Louis demands an actor with some heft, but instead we get the handsome, but psychotically bland and lifeless Dale Midkiff. Midkiff seems shell-shocked long before the film's woebegone climax. He is oddly introverted and ambivalent towards his wife and kids, so his actions later on do not ring true. He does get the film's best scene though, where the now demonic cat drops a disemboweled rodent on him while he is relaxing in the tub. It is one of the film's few honest and successful jolt moments that succeeds in spite of Lambert's clumsy staging. Sadly, Lambert works overtime to Austin Powers the scene within an inch of its life to avoid any nudity from Midkiff - which is a shame since I may have been inspired to raise the rating a star and given that his physical looks are the only worthwhile things about his performance here.
By the film's conclusion, you will be neither scared, exhausted from the suspense nor moved by the plight of anything that happens on screen. The whole result is bereft of excitement or dread and just ends up as a tacky, cheap waste of time. Which is quite sad considering the promise implicit in the King source novel.
The plot revolves around young doctor Louis Creed, who has accepted a cushy post at a local college and moves his family (wife, two children and cat) to small town Maine across the street from bucolic welcoming old neighbor Jud Crandall. The homey house faces a very busy highway where semis speed through at all hours of the day, while the back faces a dense forest wherein lies the Pet Sematary. A place where local children for generations have buried their pets, ergo the misspelled sign. When the family cat is killed on the road and Louis frets on breaking the news to the kids, Jud conveys a local secret that beyond the title place there exists an old Indian burial plot wherein the cat can be buried and resurrected. Unfortunately, the cat comes back markedly different and not in a good way, and that is only the first tragedy to befall the hapless Creed clan.
Pet Sematary is one of King's better novels filled with sympathetic, well-drawn characters, a sense of foreboding and atmosphere of dread, and a good idea of how to disconcert the reader and put them through the ringer. The Creed family and Jud are all likable. Even when they do arguably stupid actions, King makes you understand why they did it and the emotional toll that compelled such action.
Sadly this film adaptation is a mess. The film looks and feels cheap. The effects - from special effects to make-up to lighting - are phony and tacky looking. Director Mary Lambert - known mainly at this time for her efforts at music videos - has no idea how to develop atmosphere or character or suspense. The film snags some of the plot set pieces from the novel, but abandons any of the build-up or the character development that would make them have any emotional resonance. The whole effort feels rushed and you would be hard-pressed to remember it a week later.
The production is just a debacle - victim of both a badly thought out screenplay and lackluster direction. Louis's nocturnal visits from a young collegiate that was hit by a car and died on his first day of work should be nightmarish, but every time the guy shows up in his bad make-up and spouting dreadful lines, one cannot help but giggle. Ditto, another character's unexpected suicide is so badly rendered that it resulted in guffaws from my theater audience.
The characters that populate this landscape are barely sketches. With one notable exception, the acting is awful. Never once are any of them able to make you understand why they do what they do. Why does Jud convey the secret of the graveyard when he knows history has often repeated itself with tragedy? Why do Louis and Rachel stay in a house on a busy highway with their children? Why do they let the cat roam in such an environment? Who knows?
Fred Gwynne manages to rise above the material as the neighborly Jud. He is personable and sympathetic and makes you wish he were in a much better film.
Blaze Berdahl is not especially memorable as the Creed's daughter Ellie and Miko Hughes, while cute as a button, as the younger son Gage, just does not sell the film's latter portion at all. Then again, I am uncertain what young actor under this horrible direction could do it. What should be tragic and frightening somehow ends up being laughable.
Denise Crosby is abysmal as the overly emotional wife Rachel, who may as well have victim tattooed on her forehead. The sequences featuring her memories of dealing with her spinal meningitis-afflicted sister are dreadfully rendered.
Louis demands an actor with some heft, but instead we get the handsome, but psychotically bland and lifeless Dale Midkiff. Midkiff seems shell-shocked long before the film's woebegone climax. He is oddly introverted and ambivalent towards his wife and kids, so his actions later on do not ring true. He does get the film's best scene though, where the now demonic cat drops a disemboweled rodent on him while he is relaxing in the tub. It is one of the film's few honest and successful jolt moments that succeeds in spite of Lambert's clumsy staging. Sadly, Lambert works overtime to Austin Powers the scene within an inch of its life to avoid any nudity from Midkiff - which is a shame since I may have been inspired to raise the rating a star and given that his physical looks are the only worthwhile things about his performance here.
By the film's conclusion, you will be neither scared, exhausted from the suspense nor moved by the plight of anything that happens on screen. The whole result is bereft of excitement or dread and just ends up as a tacky, cheap waste of time. Which is quite sad considering the promise implicit in the King source novel.