Plot Summary

Dreaming of a better life, young doctor Louis Creed and his family – wife Rachel, daughter Ellie, and their three-year-old toddler, Gage – move to a new home in the small rural town of Ludlow, Maine. One of the first things they notice is how alarmingly close their house is to a busy highway. When Rachel’s cherished tomcat is inadvertently killed in an awful accident, Louis takes his neighbor’s advice to bury it in an ancient Indian graveyard – a mystical burial ground imbued with reanimating powers. Not long after, the cat reappears at the Creed home – but he is not the same. The once docile creature is now vicious and destructive. When their youngest son meets with a fatal accident, the distraught Louis buries him in the same location, hoping to revive him. But he ends up unleashing far more than he’s bargained for.

Memorable Lines

Jud Crandall: Sometimes, dead is better.

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Louis Creed: [about the Indian Burial Ground] Has anyone ever buried a person up there?
Jud Crandall: [Jud spills his drink] Christ on his throne, no. And who ever would?

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Jud Crandall: [narrating] The person you put up there ain’t the person that comes back. It may look like that person, but it ain’t that person. ‘Cause… whatever lives in the ground beyond the Pet Sematary ain’t human at all.

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Jud Crandall: I told you it was a bad road Louis. It’s killed a lot of pets and made a lot of kids unhappy. At least something good come of it. This place. Couldn’t plant nothing but corpses here anyway, I guess.
Rachel: How can you call it a good thing? A graveyard for pets killed in the road, built by broken hearted children.
Jud Crandall: Well, they have to learn about death somehow. Now, don’t they Mrs. Creed?

****

Jud Crandall: How’s your cat, Louis?
Louis Creed: It’s Ellie’s cat.
Jud Crandall: No. It’s your cat now.

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Thoughts from the HauntedHouses.com team

A good horror movie will set a person off-balance, leaving you either disturbed or fearful of what’s about to come next. Most of the time, the scare factor lasts for the running time of the film and then fades with the end credits.

The imprint that “Pet Sematary” leaves is more lasting.

Director Mary Lambert and screenwriter Stephen King (adapting from his own novel) introduce the unsuspecting Creed family to what looks like an idyllic existence in rural Maine, and then proceed for the next 100 minutes to mercilessly rip their world apart.

Apart from 1986’s excellent coming-of-age classic “Stand by Me,” “Pet Sematary” is quite possibly the best film adaptation of a Stephen King book. 1980’s “The Shining” comes close, but that iconic effort is infamous for the creative license Stanley Kubrick took in bringing it to the screen. By comparison, King wrote the script for “Pet Sematary” himself, and, with only a few minor exceptions, has remained truthful to his own source material. This is a horrifying movie.

Brimming with anguish, heartbreak, frights, and an escalating sense of approaching calamity, the third act of “Pet Sematary” works quite effectively as horror and tragedy. When Louis returns to the burial ground for the last time, knowing what has happened before, it becomes logical for viewers to grow skeptical of his judgment. But desperation has driven him to the point of no return. When he buries his wife’s body, he’s burying himself, and he knows it.

Dale Midkiff is near faultless as Louis Creed. The journey the actor takes in his character’s shoes would be demanding for any performer, but he pulls off every emotional turn with a gritty honesty and vulnerability. As wife Rachel, Denise Crosby (best-known for TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) does an equally fine job. Fred Gwynne is a standout as neighbor Jud Crandall — down-to-earth, wise and conversational — the sort of guy you’d like to sit on the porch and shoot the breeze with.

A motion picture of loss and regret, “Pet Sematary” is haunting, sorrowful and reverberatingly eerie. That it is as creepy as it is without bogging down in genre tropes and trappings is something of a miracle. Director Mary Lambert trusts in the universality of her characters, in their tightly drawn relationships, and the insoluble conflicts they face as their stories rush forward. It is these things that most resonate — these are what we relate to and connect with — and the reason why “Pet Sematary” has endured and not been forgotten in the many years since its release.

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