Since the first movie that was released from the Cursed Cemetery in 1989, until now, they have had a clear and twisted message, please stay if you want to continue reading my opinion about it! With a scale of 09/10, it has been one of the films that left me with doubts. and in expectation of a sequel.
King, always King. The king of terror has entered that maelstrom again, which are the adaptations. For me, great; there is nothing cuter than fighting on the internet with the fundamentalists that adaptation has to be the same as the original work. However, 24 Pictures is a film magazine, so let's move on from the book and make a friendly review of what really matters: the movie.
If anyone is still asleep, the Pet Sematary (Animal Cemetery) argument is most picturesque (and great): a family, the Creed, move from Boston to Ludlow (Maine). Louis has a new job as a university doctor, so his wife Rachel, his children Ellie and little Gage, and the cat Church, arrive at their new home with high expectations. Soon they learn that behind their property there is an animal graveyard created by the children of the town to bury their pets. And much further, a barrier that should not be crossed: an ancient Indian cemetery that brings back to life what is buried there.
This new adaptation is one more horror movie, which would not have the repercussion it has if Stephen King were not there, circling the title. A generic cast with a supposed budding superstar (Jason Clarke) and a great veteran (John Lithgow), a technical section that meets without excelling in innovation, and a music that you forget when you leave the cinema. There are the classic jumpscares, which are nothing more than that: jumpscares. Its function is to remind us that we are watching a horror movie. And together with the solemn climate, they do not intend to get out of the pre-established canons. None of this is bad, and it works well; but not for that reason we should take off the hat.
A highlight is the work on Lightgow's character, Jud Crandall. The film forms a short game, establishing that initially it oscillates between the apparent cordiality of a good neighbor and the reserve of an old man a little sinister. And for a moment he hides something, we look at him sideways. When he confesses to Louis that he showed him the Indian cemetery because little Ellie touched her heart, the statement is lazy: in fact the old Jud was always bewitched by that place.
On the other hand, one of the strengths of this story (which remains more than embodied in King's fabulous book) [1] was the ethical and moral discussion of what we would do: would we bury our loved ones in the cemetery that brings them from back to life? Even if they are not the same? This film outlines that dichotomous idea with Louis and Rachel. The first is skeptical and has no problem telling his wife that he doesn't believe there is anything after death. On the other hand, Rachel, who carries a heavy trauma for having seen her sister die, does not accept the fact that her daughter Ellie asks about the issue and wants to get her away from it at all costs. The girl suffers at the idea that one day Church is no more, and her mother reveres and fears death, believes that her daughter is too small to address that.
The interesting thing is given towards the end, when Louis, blinded by the power of the cemetery, does not want to recognize that the resurrected Ellie is not the same. Instead Rachel is the one who puts a cloak of logic to the situation, immediately moving away from her supposed daughter and trying to make her husband understand that what she did is an aberration. In the climax, who was skeptical to believe that there is something more than death is the one who least accepts it.
Personally I think that exploiting this point is what would have taken the film to another level. Treating terror from true human fears, those that are almost unspeakable, is what often frightens more than a truck slamming down the road or the snort of a cat in a dark basement. Giving history the classic horror film approach is what weakens it and does not make it transcendent, and we feel that we are chewing that overheated meal that we dined but did not enjoy at all. The philosophical implications between believing and not believing in something after death are too strong to deal with superficially, here is the question.
As a last comment, to say that towards the end everything is a bit disappointing with that armed half zombie of the Creed family, being nothing more than carnage and a resolution that sins of easy. The conclusion is, by far, the lowest point in a story that has always had tremendous potential, but that treating it as pure and exclusive terror leaves it without nuances. Maybe in twenty years we will have another period of null original ideas and Hollywood will adapt it again.