The studio album is a lost art in this age of music on demand. I’m sure they’re still around, and I’m certain that artists are still crafting records worthy of the listen, but that age feels as if it has passed. When Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon plays, one can feel the themes of the record building from song to song. The recurring motifs cascade into one another, creating a whole that is difficult to define, but it is most certainly of a kind. When the album ends, it may be seen as a whole, comprised of the individual songs, but connected by the lyrical tissue and melodic cartilage.
Conversely, there is nothing so frustrating to a fan of an artist as the greatest hits album. While all the songs are there, the ones easy to sing along to and bop your head, there is nothing to hold them in place. No consistency.
Such is the feeling coming away from this most recent adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of grief and madness. And let’s just get this out of the way – while the original novel is flawed, it is also a terrifying and grim work, one that traces the descent of Louis Creed – a father and doctor and, most importantly, a man of reason – into a madness borne of the worst kind of grief. I personally read the book when I was around twelve years of age, far too young to understand the larger themes, but captured by the writing and the unwavering bleakness of the book. Having recently revisited the novel, I appreciated more the path of its main character, and the sense of inevitability in the novel. It is, in short, one kick-ass read.
In the new film by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team behind the outstanding Starry Eyes, Louis Creed and his wife and two children are transplanted from Boston to Ludlow, Maine. Expecting to settle into a quiet country life, the family is almost immediately beset by ominous portents and creepy kids in animal masks on their way to the titular pet cemetery. Neighbor Jud Crandall, portrayed here by the eminently watchable John Lithgow, is the first local to greet young Ellie Creed (Jete Laurence) by plucking a stinger from her leg. When Ellie’s cat is smacked by a truck, Jud offers Louis (Jason Clarke) an alternative to burying the cat in the pet cemetery and forcing Ellie to confront the loss of a beloved pet. Beyond the pet cemetery lies another burial ground, one where the dead don’t stay that way.
Naturally, being a Stephen King story, things go from bad to worse as Louis finds the allure of the ancient burial grounds too great when a new tragedy strikes the family. I won’t say more, though many have seen the brazenly spoilery trailer that gives away some of the film’s best surprises.
There are things to enjoy in this movie. Lithgow is always fun to watch, and Amy Seimetz as Rachel Creed, wife and mother of the Creed clan, has the richest character in the film. She grounds the movie well when things start to come apart at the seams. The resurrected cat Church is thoroughly creepy, a much finer portrayal of the altered animal than the 1989 production. And, I suppose, the movie gets some points for bringing back the Ramones song, even if it’s not a particularly lively cover.
As for the rest, well…
The movie plays like the greatest hits of a band you love. All the right notes are here, but it feels tossed together. When Jud begins spouting lines like “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis,” it doesn’t necessarily apply to the conversation going on. Likewise, the use of “Sometimes dead is better” feels obligatory instead of chilling. Even some of the violence is merely a callback to the earlier movie adaptation, bereft of any surprises, just a nodding sense of familiarity.
From early goings, Jason Clarke’s Louis possesses no gravity, and his journey through the film is an exercise in inevitability, but not the grim kind seen in the novel. He’s simply a character who does what the story requires of him, but shows little agency. When he does, he is villainous, and not the grief-mad father of the novel or the previous film. All of this culminates in a laughable battle royale that feels designed to defy expectation rather than provide a thematically consistent conclusion. In fact, most of the movie feels like Cliff’s Notes to a larger story. The pacing is so whip-fast, there is no time for the story or characters to breathe and so, when the dark business comes, there’s no emotional weight to any of it.
A side note… I had heard repeatedly that the film is dark. Hell, there’s even a headline on IMDB touting the film using just that word – dark. Yes, the movie deals with violence towards children, and the conclusion suggests a grimness (though I found it quite silly), but there is nothing in the film to compare with the hopelessness and unblinking horror of death that rests in the pages of the source material. Also, and this will tell you what a sick twist I am, when a certain accident occurs, where was all the blood that almost certainly would have been sprayed over everything? I found the movie to be exceptionally tame, perhaps because the rumor mill had been touting the film’s darkness so loudly. When someone shows the mold on the corpse of a child, give me a ring.
Pet Sematary is a tough nut to crack, and having seen two attempts at migrating the story to a feature film, I’m not convinced that is the proper medium. Perhaps a mini-series or even an extended ten-episode run. What Stephen King has always been adept at portraying is the supernatural creeping into normal life. There is so little normal to the life in this film, it comes off like a horror film aware of its audience’s expectation, and determined to defy those expectations, at the cost of story and thematic consistency. When most of those narrative shifts are given away in the trailers for the film, even that falls flat.
I’d always looked down on the 1989 adaptation of this story. I continue to think it is hamstrung by stilted performances by everyone but Fred Gwynne and looks like a television movie, but so help me, I think it’s superior to this film. Maybe one of these days they’ll get around to making a version of this story that plays well on screen, it just hasn’t happened yet. Maybe if we bury this one in the old Micmac burial grounds, it just may come back as a more coherent and interesting movie.