If I could ask director Mary Lambert
one question about Pet Sematary, it would be this: The same
child wanders onto the same road while a large truck is coming twice.
The first time the parents sound mildly annoyed in their screams of
fear, the second time they sound terrified. Why is this? Did they
realize that Herman Muenster was going to save their child because it
was too early in the film for tragedy to strike?
As with The Dead Zone, this is a
Stephen King story that feels like it would work much better as a
mini-series. The main plot doesn’t feel quite as rushed as it did
in Dead Zone, but there are side plots that still feel as if
they were likely intended to have more development. The most obvious
of these is the character of Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist). We’re
introduced to Victor as he’s rushed to the hospital, severely
injured, and dies under the care of protagonist Louis Creed (Dale
Midkiff). Victor gives Louis an unbelievably vague warning,“The
soil of man’s heart is stoney.’ If you know what that means,
you’re doing better than me,” and then continues to appear to
Louis as a ghost throughout the remainder of the film. Why is
Victor’s spirit sticking around? Why does he declare in the last
twenty minutes of the film that he’s not “allowed any further?”
I have no clue.
There’s another subplot that seems
fairly unimportant, but more than makes up for that by being the most
genuinely disturbing part of the film. Rachel (Denise Crosby),
Louis’ wife, tells a story about how her parents had forced her at
the age of eight to stay at home while they went out to care for her
ailing sister Zelda (Andrew Hubatsek). Rachel feels continuing guilt
because she remembers wishing that her sister would die so that the
family would be rid of her. Rachel later has visions of her sister
and the evil forces try to torture her with her own guilt. Between
the make-up and Hubatsek’s performance, the scenes are just messed
up.
The actual plot of the film is a lot
less interesting than these subplots. Louis and Rachel move to a new
town, and make friends with Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne, the
aforementioned Herman Muenster), a local hick who saved their son
from his first encounter with a dump truck. Apparently, the trucks
run every few minutes down the road next to their house, filling up
the local Pet Cemetery, but building a fence around their yard to
prevent their son from wandering would be too much trouble.
Eventually, their cat is hit by a truck and Jud decides to let Louis
in on a secret: the locals can revive dead pets by burying them in a
second Pet Cemetery (declared a Sematary by a misspelled sign
written by a grieving child), not far from the first, which is on top
of a Native American burial ground. (I’m not even going to waste
my breath on how racist that cliché is.) This works, but the cat is
noticeably more aggressive, and stinks.
Then, the evil happens! Their toddler
son, Gage (Miko Hughes) is hit by another truck, and so Louis ignores
Jud’s warnings and buries Gage in the Pet Sematary. However, Gage
comes back, not simply as an aggressive corpse, but as a demon,
killing Jud and terrorizing Louis. Rachel is killed, demon-Gage is
killed, Louis deludes himself into thinking that he can get Rachel to
come back non-demonically by burying her immediately instead of
waiting. The movie ends with him kissing his blood-covered wife as
we see her reach for a knife. Cut to black, Louis screams.
I probably made that sound fairly
uninteresting, and it’s true that the main plot isn’t really
anything to write home about. Watching the interviews about this
film in the original 100 Movie Moments special, I find it a
bit hard to understand why this film was chosen. The general
consensus among those interviewed seemed to be that the movie had a
groundbreaking theme of “body without soul isn’t life.” New
rule: If at least two sub-genres (zombies and vampires off the top of
my head) have been built entirely around an idea, you’re no longer
allowed to claim that it makes your story special!
The movie’s real failing point,
though, is demonic Gage. Creepy children can be effective, but the
movie has a problem in basically treating Gage like any other
monster, posing a physical threat despite being tiny. Even using
stealth and a scalpel, I find it hard to believe that Gage was even
strong enough to slice up Jud so effortlessly. Biting into his neck
to severe his jugular shouldn’t even be worth considering, but the
filmmakers do it anyway. Say what you will about The Omen, at
least it knew that Damien wielding a weapon and physically attacking
the heroes would not be frightening.
I understand that there are currently
plans to remake this film, and I’m curious to see what they’ll do
with it. That said, there’s nothing fundamentally “wrong” with
the original. It’s cheesy, yes, but the cheese mostly works. The
acting is decent, and Gwynne is somehow fun to watch, even when he’s
just sitting there. I think this would be a perfect film for a
Halloween movie night.
No comments:
Post a Comment