By Quin
While I am certainly no expert on psychology, I have read a little about an occurrence in the human mind, where something that is traumatic and terrifying at a young age will become attractive later in life. I think this says a lot about why some of us are drawn to horror films. It seems like everyone I know has a story about the time they watched that one movie when they were way too young that scarred them for life. But by the same token, quite a few of us have turned that scarification into the motivation that drives our hunger to find the thing that will scare us the most. Like we want to get the feeling back that we experienced as a kid.
My own personal story about watching things I shouldn’t have goes back to when I was in Kindergarten. I guess I was about 5, and my parents had a VHS copy of An American Werewolf in London. I knew I had to see it, but I also knew that I probably shouldn’t. Even at 5 I think I was aware of the consequences. But I was a smooth talker and I convinced a babysitter to put it on for me. I made it to the dream sequence in the forest and ran from the room crying. (Frankly, I’m shocked I made it through the initial attack on the moors, I guess I was tougher than I thought.) Following that instance, I lost sleep over everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It got so bad that I knew horror movies weren’t for me and I didn’t like to be scared. I decided sometime in 1985 that I would never watch another scary movie again. This lasted until sometime around 1988 when I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street on television. I was amazed to find that it didn’t scare me at all. I guess I got a little cocky, thinking that watching edited mainstream horror with commercial breaks actually meant something. Little did I know, about a year later, I would see the movie that to this day is still the scariest thing I’ve ever seen – Pet Sematary.
First let me clarify, I have seen thousands of horror films as of now. So when I say that Pet Sematary is the scariest, I mean that comparatively and within the context of which I saw it. It was 1989, I was 12 years old, and the conditions were perfect for me to be emotionally destroyed by that movie. Also, I was still young and innocent enough to not have a way of defending myself against its dark and complicated themes.
Pet Sematary is the film based on the book of the same name. Like almost all stories by Stephen King, it takes place in Maine. Specifically, it is set in a small town called Ludlow, which is the same town in which Stephen King’s The Dark Half takes place. King has spent almost his entire career as a writer in Maine, with the exception of a stint in Colorado, which is where he wrote The Shining. It’s very common for writers to draw from their personal lives to fill in the details of their stories. Pet Sematary may be one of the best examples of this. So many of the things that happen in the story actually happened to Stephen King, without all of the supernatural stuff and the main climax of the film. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, I’ll get to that in a sec.
The Creed family have just moved from Chicago to Ludlow so Dr. Louis Creed can begin woking at the University of Maine as the head physician of campus health services. Across the road lives the old Jud Crandall, played by the great Fred Gwynn in a brilliant performance that puts Herman Munster out of your mind completely. He and Louis become very close over the course of the film. Early in the film, Jud warns Louis about the road they live on. It’s actually a highway that sees the occasional big rig tearing through with a truck driver behind the wheel hopped up on speed. Jud feels the need to mention the danger of the highway since the Creeds have two young children and a cat named Winston Churchhill. The next Day, Jud takes the family on a short hike to the pet cemetery. It’s a crudely made resting place – so crude that the sign provides the title’s misspelled word. This cemetery is a place for beloved pets who have died in the area dating back generations, some of which were killed on the road. Things start to get weird for Louis Creed right away. His first day on the job at the college, a student is hit by one of those trucks. Louis works to save him, but the guy doesn’t make it. This leads to Louis having dreams about the kid, or is he actually haunting him? Not only does he serve as a warning for Louis, but he is also foreshadowing personified for the viewer.
As you might guess, tragedy eventually strikes twice for the Creed family. First the family cat is killed in the road. This happens while Louis is home alone. Jud decides to let him in on a little secret. Just beyond the pet cemetery, past a deadfall, is a Micmac indian burial ground. Jud leads him there so he can bury the cat, telling him, “I’d help ya, but ya gotta do it yourself. Each buries his own.” That night, Jud tells Louis not to tell anyone what they did preaching the eerie sentiment, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier.” It doesn’t take long for Louis to realize that Church is back from the dead, only he isn’t quite the same. He smells bad and is much more irritable than before. Louis begins to think he may be going crazy. Jud tells him the story of the time he buried his dog spot in the burial ground, “A man doesn’t always know why he does things, Louis.” But when Louis asks him if anyone has ever buried a person up there, he emphatically tells him no. Well, when tragedy strikes again, Louis does the only thing he can.
It’s the start of what looks like a beautiful day. The Creeds, along with their friend Jud, are having a picnic in the yard. Some conversation, laughter and kite flying turn into the unimaginable when the Creeds’ young son Gage stumbles after his kite into the road just as a truck approaches. Gage is killed instantly. We see his father scream in anguish and horror, as a small bloody sneaker skips in slow motion across the screen. What is a grieving father to do? He has been given the option of cheating death out of taking anything he loves. Yes, he makes the choice to bury Gage just beyond the pet cemetery. Gage comes back. But much like Church, Gage isn’t himself. People start to die and a chain of events is now in motion where Louis cannot make any more good decisions.
As I mentioned before, the themes at play in Pet Sematary are so dark and disturbing, it’s almost a miracle the book was ever written and that the film was made. Stephen King was so afraid he had crossed a line with this story that he put it away for five years before his wife Tabitha finally convinced him that the story was great and needed to be published. As horrible as the death of a child is, the story goes even deeper at reminding the viewer of their own mortality. With the tagline SOMETIMES DEAD IS BETTER in mind, the movie presents us with imagery that shows us how horrifying getting sick can be. Shortly after the first visit to the Pet Sematary, Louis and his wife Rachel have an argument over how to talk to their daughter about death. Rachel is of the opinion that she is too young and it shouldn’t be discussed. What follows is an emotional but deeply spine-chilling flashback that explains why Rachel feels the way she does. When she was a young girl, her older sister Zelda had become sick with Spinal Meningitis. One afternoon she was left to care for her alone as her parents went away for the day. Her sister had become so physically twisted and mentally insane, she could no longer feed herself or move and she looked like the stench of death. As Rachel feeds her mushy, gelatinous goo, easy enough for her to try to swallow, Zelda begins to choke. She writhes as her mouth opens to reveal the goo and her black tongue. Her eyes roll back. As Rachel explains in a voice-over, “They’ll say I murdered her by choking. They’ll say, “you hated her”… and that was true.”
Zelda represents the fear of death. The death of Gage has always been troubling to me. And I couldn’t even imagine what the imagery in this film could do to a parent. But for me, Zelda was the thing that haunted my nightmares for a very long time. It got so bad that I couldn’t even say the word Zelda. I couldn’t even think of the letter Z without her boney, sunken face flashing through my mind. It was entirely by accident one day years later, I was watching Ramones videos on youtube and I ran across the music video for “Pet Sematary” – the title track on the soundtrack – as the video goes through clips from the film, it gets to a quick shot of Zelda with her hands up near her face, laughing. I saw it and felt this burst of adrenaline. My heart started to pound. After all these years I couldn’t believe I saw her again. When the anxiety began to die down, I decided to take another look. I had no more adrenaline and I was no longer frightened. I laughed.
In the last 5 years or so, a special edition DVD of Pet Sematary was released. It includes a widescreen transfer of the film, a behind the scenes documentary as well as commentary with the director Mary Lambert. Since I was no longer afraid, I bought it immediately. I’ve now watched it at least half a dozen times. I can now look at it more critically. While the story is great (the script was adapted by Stephen King himself), some of the acting is terrible. Fred Gwynn is superb, as is the young Miko Hughes who plays Gage. But Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby as the Creeds are positively wooden. The young Ellie Creed is played by twin sisters and she delivers many of her lines like she’s in a school play. The direction of the film goes back and forth between made-for-TV-esque melodrama and taut, chilling horror with gorgeous country scenery. The film gets a big thumbs up for looking almost exactly how you imagine it when you read the book as well as following the story remarkably close. For me, I can forgive the acting that goes wrong in places.
Fortunately, this is one of those films that makes its way through the rumor mill every year or so, with reports that it is going to be remade. I know that hardcore horror fans turn up their noses at remakes as much as new “found footage” films, but Pet Sematary is a remake that I would welcome with open arms. I would love to see someone else’s interpretation of it. I would also welcome the possibility of being scared all over again by an updated version that is more stylized. I’m not going to lie. If it ever gets made, I will be nervous as hell to see it. But I will see it no matter what. Until then, my fears are buried just beyond the deadfall, waiting to return.