Pet Sematary

I can't say I was directly expecting it, but Pet Sematary is a great honest-to-goodness horror film. It takes the essentials from King's premise, and isn't afraid to play with them in such a way that the result is surprising even to someone who knows it, yet the outcome remains 100% King. During a few scenes there was a completely sepulchral silence in a reasonably full theater, which I think says it all. I cared about the characters and as time went on I became uncertain of almost everything and enjoyed it immensely. Jason Clarke fits the role perfectly and I enjoyed him as much as John Lithgow, the music by horror expert Christopher Young is also good, you hardly notice it while watching but it's worth a separate listen. I'm just supremely satisfied, despite the fact that I was looking forward to the Frankenstein madness of the book and got something completely different (but just as good). It all culminated in an extremely tense finale in a misty graveyard... and the ending! It wasn't a Stephen King ending, it was a Richard Bachman ending! (13/04/2019)

It's like someone has been reading my reviews of contemporary horror films for the last five years. And didn't much care for me. Who are these people I'm supposed to be worried about? What are they into? Why should I care about their hardships? Is it really that hard to make a horror movie set in the woods and actually shoot it in the woods? Does it really not bother anyone that the night exteriors look like a digitally rejuvenated Russian studio fairy tale from the 80s? Don't tell me it never once occurred to any of the filmmakers that a camera with a high frame rate looks absolutely dreadful in a horror movie. I know you like how fast and easy it can refocus, how many colors it captures, and how monumental the resolution is, but watch that shot of Jason Clarke running to get his daughter after the collision with the truck, for example. And then watch it again. And then shoot yourself. Do it! Personally, I'm not much of a King fan, but at the same time I know he hates his characters and thinks they're jerks. But even he seems to be struggling to show the motivations behind their seemingly moronic decisions. Here, the characters are constantly acting like they've pressed a self-destruct button. Apparently there are some literary explanations to the reasons for their behavior. They still can't be divined from the film. The reason is that it's awfully poorly shot, dreadfully written, and the people there don't really know how to act. But, hey, it’s got jump scares! Yay. They're great, there's about 200 of them, and when a frog croaks in the silence, your hair falls out. A fast-moving truck only makes a sound within a one-meter radius, and besides, if you discover the key to how they work, you've got it made, because it always means the scene is suggesting something's going to pop out from one side, but then it pops out from another! Heavens preserve us! (09/07/2019)

I received the source material a few months before viewing it and out of the growing stack of Stephen King's books that I have read, this is definitely one of the scariest, if not the scariest, and certainly the most unpleasant, disturbing, and inducing of lingering nightmares. The adaptation logically shortens or simplifies many storylines, which is not a problem as long as it manages to take all the motifs far enough and lets the main characters get where they belong. In this spirit, I easily accept both the change of the central twist and the subsequent shortcuts in favor of tension. However, what I can't accept is the last approximately ten minutes, which, although effectively scary and frightening, are exactly the way the book never was. There a hint or a few glances, actions, and sentences were enough, and this gave rise to the ending, which I consider to be one of the best endings I have ever read. Unfortunately, the adaptation takes the opposite, more action-oriented path, but perhaps because I understand that the film medium is completely different from the literary one, especially in this genre, I am being more lenient in my rating. The mood that settled in my soul for months after reading, namely Jud's message about male hearts that are simply stonier, is also present here, although the viewer must actively seek it out. (07/07/2019)

I'm not an uncritical King fan, yet I gave the new version of Pet Sematary a chance. Sadly, King adaptations will probably never get out from under their shadows again. It's still all about there being one better film for every twenty crap ones, and really only rarely is there a work worthy of the viewer's remembering. That's how I fondly remember Carrie and Misery. A lot of the other films were bad. (31/12/2019)

I decided to watch both film versions made twenty years apart in one afternoon. The comparison didn’t turn out very well for the remake. I found the children's funeral "procession" amusing. Knowing Americans, something like that would be an incentive for another Salem, it smacked too much of pagan rituals that have no place in the most democratic country on the planet. Black Pascow looked as if he had been attacked by an angry Wolverine. I’m not a huge fan of Jason Clarke. John Lithgow, whom I do like, got too little screen time as Jude. I couldn't even enjoy any potential atmosphere, because the creators bet on the dumbest jump scares and the final cover by Starcrawler was a bad joke. (30/07/2019)