Forget the Shining, This Overlooked Horror Gem Is Stephen King's Most Terrifying Adaptation
This is not about ghosts or vampires.
For 35 years, the first film adaptation of Stephen King 's novel Pet Sematary has captivated the viewers.
Director Mary Lambert managed to create both an excellent horror film and a thoughtful drama about the vicissitudes of familial love. Over the past decades, Lambert's movie has not wasted any of its dark romance.
King and Lambert Explore Family and Attachment
The topic of a family in peril is often found in King's prose. But never before has the author explored the theme of mutual affection so deeply. In Pet Sematary, the dark side of love is revealed.
Stephen King and Mary Lambert ponder: does love always give wings, fill a person's soul? How often does a strong emotional attachment to the object of love turn an exemplary family man into an obsessive person unable to heed the arguments of reason?
1989's Pet Sematary Perfectly Conveys the Main Idea of the Novel
The plot of Mary Lambert's horror is constantly on the edge of sleep and reality. Her living dead seem to have emerged from the most terrible nightmares. After all, the death of a loved one, especially a child, is one of the most persistent fears for any human being.
The main idea of the novel is not lost behind the cascade of special effects. Sometimes the inability to cope with difficulties drives a person to rash actions. Grasping at the straw of the resurrection cemetery, the main character Louis does not realize the consequences of his decision. What will rise from the ground of the cemetery at night will no longer be a person.
Flashbacks play an important role in creating the disturbing atmosphere of the film. Mary Lambert brilliantly visualizes Rachel's past, showing in bizarre lighting her sister Zelda, disfigured by illness, whom their parents hid in a distant room like a shameful secret.
Jud Crandall's past also comes to life. Shot from behind, Timmy Baterman, on all fours, digging a hole like a dog, inspires horror with his bestial appearance and abrupt movements. But when he turns to face the camera, the viewer sees that he is trying to hide the child's leg.
It becomes clear that it will not be long before a new, grief-stricken father will breed the same monsters with the help of a cursed graveyard, naively believing that he can cheat death.
Mary Lambert's Film Is Still the Best Adaptation of the Novel
In Pet Sematary the director managed to achieve the perfect balance between the beautiful – family and the terrible – death. By actively using emotional close-ups, surreal images from the past of her characters, Mary Lambert shows that not only life is fragile, but also the human psyche.
Quite simply, a touching attachment to family can turn into an obsession, so that a person takes more and more relatives to the cursed cemetery, not wanting to realize the philosophical truth – sometimes it is necessary to let go of loved ones.
Thirty years later, a new version of Pet Sematary is released, written by the directing duo Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, but the new version is inferior in every way to Mary Lambert's film, which has become a cult classic.