Here's what you need to know; when he moves his family out to the quiet little town of Ludlow in Maine, Louis Creed hopes that things will calm down a little and that he can spend more time with his wife and kids. That doesn't quite work out however when he learns that on his property is the Pet Sematary, a place where kids ritualistically bury their dead pets. But something far more sinister lurks in the trees, deeper in the woods, past the Pet Sematary, is a place where the line between life and death blurs, and where an unimaginable evil waits for Louis and his family.
I'm not much of a Stephen King guy, I don't dislike him, I'm just not very familiar with him or his work, and as such, have not read his book; Pet Sematary or seen the 1989 film based on it. I did, however, adore IT in 2017, and was enticed by the trailers for Pet Sematary; the latest attempt to bring Stephen King's work to the big screen. And I will say it now, if you somehow have not seen any trailers for this film, don't, because they spoil the entire film, but since I'll be talking about these spoilers in my review, here is your obligatory spoiler warning, I'll try to keep it as light as possible, but no promises.
Pet Sematary's opening is creepy, to say the least, giving us a flash forward of a burning house and a car door covered in bloody handprints, before we flash back to the beginning of the story. This sequence sets the tone beautifully as the bright, inviting colours of Maine contrasts wonderfully with the dark, lifeless aesthetic of the flashforward. Without a word spoken, the film establishes its horrific tone and foreshadows its chilling conclusion, I love it. What follows is a very typical and charming introduction to our victims; Louis Creed and his family, as well as the family pet, a friendly little cat named Church. Louis's character is not your typical horror hero, in fact he's not a hero of any sort, and is less of a character and more of an exploration of the premise of the Pet Sematary. He starts out as a completely normal guy, he works a job, has a wife and two kids, they're all happy, there's nothing out of the ordinary about him. The closest thing to an ark that louis has is his atheism, which is challenged in this film, obviously, and I can see one way of looking at this film where he is a villain, since the really bad shit that happens is mostly his fault. But it's this ambiguity that I like about him; you could see him as a stupid fool who ignores the obvious warnings out of greed and a desire to play god, or you could see him as a normal man driven insane not only by grief, but by his discovery that death is not permanent. This conflicting character is fascinating, but he isn't exactly a crowd-pleasing hero, and I can see that as a reason that most of the people I know who've seen this film think that it's boring and overly depressing, because our 'hero' is an every man who makes a terrible mistake for a perfectly understandable reason.
His wife, Rachel has a bit more going on thanks to her past experiences with death. It's a touchy subject for her, as is the existence of the afterlife, which she likes to believe in while her atheistic husband dismisses it. This film isn't exactly scary in a conventional sense, but the scenes where Rachel is haunted by her past are some of the creepiest scenes in the film, and make beautiful use of visual and body horror, providing the film with some pretty disturbing imagery. Their daughter, Ellie serves a much simpler and more singular role in the film, that being an example of the nature of life and death; of how life can be so sweet and pure, of how death can seem so cruel and unfair, but how it's merely an unavoidable, amoral reality of life, one that we have no right to meddle with, no matter how well we justify it. Feeding into this notion of death being neither bad or good is Victor, a ghost that haunts Louis throughout the film and warns him of the Pet Sematary, a place where he mustn't tread as "the ground is sour," a warning that Louis makes the mistake of ignoring. This film's line up of central characters is very small, as the only one left that we haven't discussed is Jud, the very grandfatherly neighbour who finds Ellie exploring the Pet Sematary and becomes a friend of the family. Like Louis, Jud made the mistake of meddling with mortality when he was younger, and knows not only about the power of the woods, but also how dangerous and evil it is. But he too makes a terrible mistake for a perfectly understandable reason, one that kicks off all this film's fucked up goings on. But while Louis is a bit of an every man, Jud has, as I said before, a very grandfatherly quality about him, one that's challenged by the subtlest of implications towards the end of the film.
One thing that might be a bit of a problem for a lot of viewers is that use of implication and ambiguity, there are a lot of things in this film that aren't explained or explored in detail, such as Jud's past and how far he went with the power given to him by the Pet Sematary, but the most mysterious thing in the film is the Wendigo. The Wendigo was a legend from old Indian folklore of a monster or evil spirit that prowled the forests of the Atlantic coast, one driven endlessly by its desire to sate its insatiable hunger, the legend is associated with loads of nice things like murder, famine, cannibalism and greed, but in the context of Pet Sematary, it means something a little different. The Wendigo is nothing more and one of the film's numerous implications, a monster that is never seen, but who's presence lingers just out of sight for the entire film. There is something in the woods, and as Jud says, it maybe the Indian Wendigo, it may be something else entirely, but this is one of the things I adore about this film. There's something almost Lovecraftian about its depiction of the Sematary and of the Wendigo, two forces that exist and are observable, yet defy explanation or comprehension; a place in the woods where the dirt can raise the dead, where the boundaries between the mortal world and whatever exists after it are broken. In this context, the Wendigo embodies corruption; as its power is wielded by good men who are too driven by love to comprehend the evil of their actions, unaware that they are playing into the hands of a force that is invisibly pulling the strings and feeding on their love, figuratively and literally. 
But I was trying to make a point that the film might be a bit too ambiguous, which might be a problem if you like things to make sense and have clear explanations, two qualities this films doesn't have. But while I've had problems with films not explaining things in the past, in this instance, I'm just having fun with its morbid and depressing character studies and getting engrossed in the fascinating and terrifying ideas this film dabbles in. The problem however is that this isn't really a crowd-pleasing horror film, this isn't in the same vein as a lot of other horror films coming out today, it's a little weird, and ignores many conventions of the genre. For example, while the film does have jumpscares, they're used very sparingly, and come from the Sinister or IT school of thought, accompanying them with disturbing imagery. There are also multiple scenes that look like they're building to a jumpscare, and yet the scare never comes, which I appreciate because I like a film that builds its horror and atmosphere, and Pet Sematary does that expertly. It's more creepy than it is scary, there are tense scenes that get the heart racing, and there's the odd jumpscare, but Pet Sematary's horror is the kind of horror that burrows its way into your head and stays there, it's eldritch and provocative rather than creepy for the sake of creepy. For that reason though, I can see why the film may be boring to a lot of people, because it's a film that takes its time in winding up the tension and horror, slowly peeling back the veneer of its happy, quaint setting and revealing the horror beneath, a horror that exists all around us all the time, one that it forces us to stop ignoring. All of this leads to a very bleak conclusion, one I won't spoil, but it too is something that might turn people off, like the film being very slow and deliberate, and people finding that boring, the ending might be a bit too depressing for some people, the kind of people who've never watched The Mist and have no idea what a depressing ending really is.
Sometimes, Dead Is Better
As I've said, Pet Sematary is not your average, mass appeal horror film, it doesn't go nuts with many of the genre's trappings, which, while a turn off to many, makes it a film that I really liked. Pet Sematary is a film that takes its time in establishing its characters and building its horror, presenting a couple of gripping character studies that all end up at the Sematary, a place that is as fascinating as it is unsettling, playing with a horror that relies more on the unseen than the seen, an unknowable evil who's presence lingers from the film's opening all the way up to its chilling final shot. It's not a film that everyone will enjoy, but it is one that I enjoyed, and I'd say Pet Sematary is worth watching.
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