Based on a Stephen King book, "Pet Semetry" is a horror film that looks at death, desire, reanimation, and why you should never build on top of an ancient Indian burial ground. A young 2.4 family move into the country, the new house they move into is right next to a big and dangerous road. They learn from their new neighbour that the road is deadly and has killed lots of local resident's pets over the years, and as such there is a local cemetery that was built by kids for their pets. While the family, minus the father, are away for a holiday tragedy strikes and the family cat is killed. The young father takes the cat to "Pet Semetry" and buries him, little does he know about the magic and witchcraft sown deep into this ancient Indian burial ground. The cat is reanimated, but is not like his former self, instead of being a loving cat; he's now feral and vicious. These are only the beginning of the problems though. Film's made out of Stephen King book's don't/didn't always make the grade on the silver screen, a lot of them never captured the tension of his writing and the movie adaptions ended up a little cheesy. This film however managed to do well, and doesn't detract massively from the book. I remember watching it as a youngster in the 90's and it was quite frightening. Watching it back closer to the age of 40 yo I can say that he film still manages to hold its own. The reason for this is because it's a solid story. Rather than get too deep into scientific reasons for events, or the history of the location, or even what form evil is taking in the film - it's handled from the point of view of the young father - we don't learn any more than he does, we just have to go with it. Nowadays there would likely be an entire additional hour looking at why reanimation affects different people differently, and why the evil is there in the first place. Granted, the book does delve into some of these things a little to build the tension, but in the film, there just isn't enough time to do so while maintaining the pace of events. So handling it the way it was generally works. The casting and acting is good, the young father is played by Dale Midkiff and is generally believable throughout. Denise Crosby plays he wife and does well, although I've never really been a fan for some reason (she has limited expressions and emotions - sorry). Fred Gwynne is the narrator and neighbour and drives the film forward, his performance is really good actually - sometimes hard on the ears to understand due to the random accent, but he's a rock in this film. The real winner is Miko Hughes as Gage Creed, the youngest child. He seems to be play sweet and creepy real well - I can see why he went on to have a decent career beyond this. Fair enough his lines are a little staged early on, but the switch in persona he manages later makes up for the cheesiness of the opening performance he brings. All in all this is a decent film, I can see why it's been rated highly amongst reviewers and I concur with them for the most part. For me this gets a 7 out of 10 - It's an all-around decent horror film, with a mix of emotions on display, despite being nearly 30 years old it manages to not look dated and out of place.

The special effects were bad which isn't entirely surprising since it came out in '89. Like, of course when modern audiences see Victor Pascow disappear and reappear they laugh. But even the practical effects were pretty awful and just lazy. When Missy Dandridge hanged herself you can clearly see the suspension device attached to her shoulders underneath her shirt. Timmy Baterman is seen pulling at his undead flesh in a flashback scene when Jud is telling his story and no flesh comes off. Victor Pascow's makeup/the effect where it's supposed to look like his brain is sticking out wasn't done well and we see him for a lot of the film. The acting in this movie is just... bad. There are a lot of things that bothered me about this movie, but what bothers me most is that they chose a man to play Zelda. And his makeup was the laziest/most disappointing in the entire film. He was not creepy or scary despite trying to be. I don't think the script was awful but some of the lines in this film are just not things people say in real life. And the whole movie just feels so rushed. I think my last review got taken down for talking too much about the novel and the 2019 remake. So, all I'll say is this: If you saw this film without the context of the novel, it's utterly confusing. And I know I'm not supposed to talk about other reviews but I even saw one person who thought Louis was a veterinarian instead of a collegiate physician. With the context of the novel it makes much more sense but it is still executed poorly with an underwhelming cast, very poor effects both special and practical, and a runtime that could have been a bit longer.

The movie itself isn't bad. They do a decent enough job keeping close to the source material for an hour-and-a-half movie from an almost 400 page book. There are some glaring omissions, but overall it's fine. That being said, the only three good actors in this entire movie are Fred Gwynne (Jud), Andrew Hubasteak (Zelda) and 2 year old Miko Hughes (Gage). The two who played Louis and Rachel are atrocious, and that's bad considering the movie is based more around them than anyone else. Truly two of the worst lead actors in cinema history. People like to say stuff like Troll 2, Plan 9, The Room, Battlefield Earth, etc. have some horrendous acting, well look no further than Pet Semetary for acting that lives right up there with those movies.

I'm not sure if it is my age, or if it is that Hollywood has fresh run out of ideas but it feels as if they simply don't make films like this anymore. Okay, I would hardly call it the perfect film – far from it – but compared to a lot of the mind numbing films out there this film is simply superb. Basically it is the tragedy of a doctor who has moved out to the new England countryside, and it certainly is a tragedy – as one death after another haunts him we see him descend further and further into a madness rocked by grief until he commits a sin so horrendous that it ends in his death. I remember a teacher telling me that the sign of a good tragedy is when you want to scream out to the protagonist to stop but you are powerless and simply end up watching his (or her) descent.Basically he moves to this house and just down a path is a cemetery where pets are buried. He lives on a road that has trucks endlessly roaring down it, which is why there are so many pets buried in the place. However, when his daughter's cat is killed the neighbour shows him another place where if the dead are buried they return to life – but they are changed. The thing is that the dead basically want to stay dead, and when they are yanked out of that peaceful rest they are simply not happy at all – as is the case with the cat.However, grief makes people do stupid things – they simply don't think clearly, and in the throws of grief will lash out and attempt to change the past. The thing with the past is that it simply cannot be changed. Even though it may seem possible to make things right, the more we attempt to make them right, the worse things turn out, so when his life descends into a fit of despair he starts to make decisions that have enormous repercussions. The thing is that it isn't as if he is a bad person – far from it – he is just a normal man who has suffered a great loss, and seeing the opportunity to rectify it he does so, with horrendous consequences.The great thing about this film is that it is focused entirely on the protagonist – it is his story, and it is his descent. Okay, I haven't read the book, but it is something that I would want to attempt to do sometime in the future (if I am able to get my hands on a copy). Actually, I remember watching this film multiple times when I was much younger, so you could probably imagine my joy when I discovered that it was actually on television again.As I mentioned, it isn't a perfect movie, but it certainly ages well. Okay, the lack of modern technology, such as mobile phones, certainly stands out, but that isn't the biggest problem. In part it seems to descend into a slasher flick at the end, but I guess that is the purpose of the film. However, I certainly wouldn't call it a slasher flick, namely because such films have a group of protagonists being killed one by one, and that isn't the case here. However, since it does fall into the horror genre the film makers do make an attempt to ramp up the blood and gore, which isn't necessary at points.The other things that got me is that there seemed to be this friendly ghost – Pascal – but while he spends a lot of time apparently helping the wife, this seems to come to naught. In part he pops in and out to warn people, but in another sense he seems to be leading them, or at least the wife, to her death. The other thing is that he seems to haunt other characters, so I'm am not entirely sure of the nature, purpose, or even need of that particular character. However, for an older film, it is certainly one worth watching, even though it has probably drifted into the mists of history.