Pet Sematary: Review By moviegeek

Pet Sematary is based on a Steven King story. Although I don't know how closely this follows the book, I can imagine this tale being scary on paper. But on screen, it looks a tad silly.

The plot follows the Creed family who have just moved into a new house. This new house is bordered by a dangerous highway in front, and a mysterious cemetery behind. This cemetery has been constructed to bury pets killed along the highway. Oooh scary.

The family consists of a mother, a father, and two young kids. They also have a pet cat, Church. (take a stab at his fate) Things would appear normal, but their kindly neighbor, Fred, tells them of the scary stories in the area. While the mother and kids are away, the father takes a journey with Fred to an ancient Indian burial ground. He buries an animal there and leaves.

To his surprise, he later finds the animal alive and roaming around his house the next day. But this is not the same cat. It is instead a glowing-eyed vicious cat, same body, different mind. He consults Fred about this mysterious occurrence.

Without giving too much away, the movie shifts gears from the terrifying demon cat, to terrifying demon human. This transition is rough and ridiculous. There was no logical motivation behind any of the characters actions.

As I stated earlier, this would probably work well as a story. The plot is spooky and the locations have a fearful disposition. There would also be more time to develop character motivations. But the movie makes everything campy and silly. In a story, the plot is eerie and slowly unveiled. It gives you chills. In movies, you will look for in-your-face scares. But this movie is so aggressive to grab your attention and frighten you, you aren't scared, but annoyed.

The movie was fine-ish when it was dealing with the possessed animal. I found it scary and liked the conflict the characters faced. But the plot tumbles over itself and turns into generic horror by the end. I can't really place my finger onto what went wrong with this movie. I think it ought to have been paced more mysteriously and not so blatantly. There should have been more time to develop the scares instead of just bombarding us tirelessly.

By the end, oh the ridiculous final scenes, I felt nothing for this movie except boredom. Mary Lambert's directing is unnecessarily aggressive instead of being more methodically chilling. The acting is sub-par and uneven. The special effects are campy and silly. It starts interestingly enough, but loses its intrigue about as quickly as a fizzling balloon. (fizzling?)