Movie: Pet Sematary
Year: 1989
Genre: Horror
Director: Mary Lambert
Stars: Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby and Fred Gwynne

Snapshot of Story:
A family arrives at a small town to start a new life and discover that the area they live is haunted and tainted with old stories of nightmares of the dead coming back alive. One of many remakes of the famous novelist Stephen King’.

Storyline:
Dale Midkiff plays the doctor Louis Creed who arrive along with his wife and two young kids to a new house in a small town in the countryside. The neighbors are reluctant to talk about the cemetary that lies behind their house.

The family lives very close to a busy road that passes their house with no protection such as a fence and the result is that their own child gets runover by a passing truck. Previous to that the doctor found that their cat who met the same fate had returned when the cat was buried in the mysterious cemetary. The doctor feeling much pain assumed the same for his child and buried him in the cemetary. However, when the child returned he wreaked havoc in the house and goes on to kill his neigbour and his mother.

Further Notes:
Stephen King’s story plays well into the emotions of the family losing their own child and the unbearable agony of having lost their own baby child. Bringing back the child from the dead is almost an inevitable choice that the father makes from the pain of bereavement. The film stylishly ends with the mother also coming returning from the dead.

Conclusion:
Although the film at its time was a good rendition of the macabre stories by Stephen King but unfortunately by today’s standard does not hit the mark. The film is let down by the not so great acting of Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby, unfortunately the strong screen presence of Fred Gwynne could not do much to lift this film.

Rating:
5.5/10