Pet Sematary (1989)

Pet Sematary, the 1989 film based on the 1983 Stephen King novel of the same name owes its origins to when "In 1978, King returned to his alma mater, the University of Maine at Orono, to teach for a year as a gesture of gratitude for the education he had received there. During this time his family rented a house on a busy road in Orrington. The road claimed the lives of a number of pets, and the neighborhood children had created a pet cemetery in a field near the Kings' home. King's daughter Naomi buried her cat "Smucky" there after it was hit, and shortly thereafter their son Owen had a close call running toward the road. King wrote the novel based on their experiences, but feeling he had gone too far with the subject matter of the book, he discarded the idea of having it published. However, needing a final book for his contract King reluctantly submitted it to Doubleday on the advice of his wife Tabitha^[3] and friend Peter Straub.^{[4]"-Wikepida}

Knowing this backstory you can really see how these various elements feed into the fictional narrative, which is about a young doctor, his wife, two kids and cat who move into a rural Maine home when he takes a job at the local university. The house is on a busy road which has taken the lives of many local pets who for decades the children have buried in a nearby "pet sematary", the misspelling of the name being a nod to the fact that the spot was originally established by children. The story is at its heart about the difficult and unpleasant (though ultimately necessary) task of explaining death to children, and the understandable childlike desire to reject death. The pet sematary itself is ultimately a kind of starting point for exploring these ideas, with the mystical spot in fact being beyond the pet sematary (Beyond the Pet Sematary might have been a more accurate name for this story) in an old Indian burial ground which you find out early in the film, with the help of an affable neighbor played by Fred Gwynee (best known as Herman Munster, whose presence is in my opinion is the best thing about this movie, and I'm not putting the movie down in saying this, I'm putting Fred Gwynee up).

Once this ancient cemetery has proven its ability to bring a pet cat back from the dead it opens the question of doing the same with a human, and when our leads youngest child is killed by a truck on the dangerous road in front of their home, well the ground has been lade for a creepy climax. I really liked this movie, it had an excellent and distinctive mood to it, I liked the cast, I liked the story and the ideas behind it, I liked the dark humor of it, like the angel who still sports the disfiguring injuries that resulted in his death as he attempts to influence the Creed family away from messing with the dark powers that lie 'Beyond the Pet Sematary.' There is some great existential dread to this piece of work, yet its also enjoyably watchable. Recommended ***