But make no mistake: while there are moments of levity, Pet Sematary is unapologetically horrifying. Dread blankets the film, to the point where it’s almost suffocating. Cinematographer Laurie Rose bathes the movie in shadows and fog, and Christopher Young concocts a jarring score full of atonal sounds and ominous chanting. The terror is palpable here – and it never lets up. You’ll feel a pronounced sense of anxiety for nearly the entire runtime, sitting in the pit of your stomach like a stone.
But will any of this win over King purists? Or fans of the ’89 movie? Anyone expecting the new Pet Sematary to play by the same rules is going to be both shocked, and maybe disappointed. The entire third act of the film in particular is wildly different from what King wrote so many years ago. Yet despite all this, I truly believe this is one of the best adaptations of King’s work. Because in the end, it understands exactly what makes the book so powerful, and terrifying. “Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret,” King wrote in the introduction to the novel, and that seems to serve as a mantra for this film as a whole. No one can know what awaits us when we shuffle off this mortal coil, but the implications from King’s novel, and this new take on the material, makes it clear that whatever it is, it’s preferable to tampering with those secrets and mysteries. As Jud Crandall says, “Sometimes, dead is better.”
/Film Rating: 9 out of 10
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