Pet Sematary
| release date | April 21 1989 |
| studio | Paramount |
| director | Mary Lambert |
| writer | Stephen King |
| starring | Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne |
| rating | R |
| tagline | Sometimes Dead is Better... |
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7 Comments
LOVE IT! deff. a must see.
WATCH IT NOWWWWW!
one of my favs
this movie freaked me out so much when I was a kid..lol defenitly a freaky movie about life and death then life while dead..lol
Greatest Stephen King movie
A great Stephen King movie! Atmospheric, creepy, sad. Good blood and gore effects and a decent script and direction make this one a winner.
Great film, great atmosphere & story. Fred Gwynne was terrific. Add to that, one of the creepiest chicks in horror, “Zelda”. To this day I get this cold, clammy feeling when I watch it. Looking back on it, nearly 20 yrs. later, it’s an incredibly sad film when you think about it. The death of Gage gets to me even more because I have a child of my own now. It has some really depressing moments through-out. That being said, it also has some compelling moments. One of my favs is the tale that Gwynne tells about Timmy Bateman(spelling?). Another being when Jud & Louis go to bury Church. The scene of dusk approaching while Louis digs & Jud’s lighting up a cigarette. Creepy-cool atmosphere in that scene. Just a gory, creepy-cool flick!!! Not to mention a cool sdtrk by the Ramones. Highly recommended viewin’!!!
The flashback scenes with zelda are the most terrifying scenes i’ve ever seen. The painting on the wall of zelda as a child before she was disease-stricken, dressed in the same blue outfit, top hat, and cane as gage is truly chilling. To think that Zelda’s came back from the dead through gage’s body is absolutley terrifying.
I agree, this movie is a classic, scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. Now is one of my favorites. Any fan of horror movies most see this one.
I would have to say this is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. Since I have kids of my own now it bothers me even more thinking about Gage and the power of bringing something back from the dead not knowing the circumstances of bringing someone you love that much back is just insane to me.
This is without a doubt the best movie adaptation of a Stephen King novel. I have loved this movie since I was a kid & it’s still great!
Great movie!
soooo creepy this movie is awsome killer pets killer kids creepy cemetary and the woman with the spine desease…fuckin great!
Some of the creepiest moments on film. Watch out for Zelda.
Still the only film to scare the shit out of me! Zelda tear’s me up! always has scared me and still does unlike the exorcist or It! It’s the true scare-fest! Zelda is the ultimate boogy man! lol
Read the book it’s alot better than the movie.
Classic Stephen King. Yeah, sure it’s not super great or anything. Just the premise alone and the kid from Full House being all evil and attacking people with a scalpel is bad ass enough. Oh and when I was little all the scenes with Zelda scared the crap out of me.
“First I play with Judd, then Mommy came, and I play with Mommy. We play Daddy! We had a awfully good time! Now, I want to play with YOU!”
ugh ugh fucking Zelda is the scarriest disease woman I’ve ever seen on the TV! This is scary stuff right here, the deaths, that nasty ass man who says “we’ve got places to go”,..no point in listing all that is scary because all is scary people! Can be placed on the shelf next to The Shining with on par scare levels. They look good next to eachother, honest, and have Misery on the other side! Hah, KING’s got the goods baby!
I CAN IN NO WAY, beleive that there have been only 16 user revies on this movie!
This is a FREAKING CLASSIC!
Amazing movie, terrifying to no end. “Mommy already came. We played, daddy.First I played with Jud and then mommy came and I played with mommy. We had an awful good time. Now I want to play with you.” That is some damned scary crap man!.
Great movie.
This is one of my favorite movies, of all time growing up. I live in, and around where they filmed most of this in Maine, and it just makes the experience more real when I see it on film. I have since visited the locations, and take my friends to see it, and hopefully like my children, like my Father did for me. Fred Gwynne was born to play this role, and reminds me exactly of my Father (a born Mainer), who has since passed away. He gets the accent down, perfect. “Ah,yuh” This film will follow me to the grave in the amount of times I have seen it. A true horror classic..
Fun fact: George Romero was supposed to direct this film.
Pure greatness, one of the best Stephen King film adaptations to ever grace the screen. Oh, and when I was little the ending just straight freaked me the fu#k out! Great horror classic.
great movie
the book is in fact MUCH better, but this is a great adaptation for me. very creepy, for sure a classic!
I thought this was supposed to be a horror movie. I give this movie a 7 rating because I was laughing all the way through it. The acting was kinda decent but the script was so bad that all the horror scenes turned out to be hysterical.
Now THAT is a horror movie.
exellent movie
Scared the crap out of me when I first saw it. I was watching it with some friends and had to make up an excuse to turn it off as I was terrified, but didn’t want my friends to know. The scene with Zelda was especially disturbing.
Although this film does have its flaws, it’s terrifying. The cat, the friendly ghost with a head injury, the evil child and burial ground itself….all nightmare inspiring. Pet Sematary is probably the scariest book I’ve ever read, and the film definitely captures the mood of that book. FAVORITE SCENE: Timothy Baterman comes home.
*Warning: Major Spoilers ahead*
Watching Pet Semetary has made me understand why Hollywood does remakes. While the title has cache as a brand name and clout by association, originating from the pen of one Stephen King, this 1989 creep show is a strong candidate for re-incarnation. Let me just say that I completely understand the rose coloured glasses with which we sometimes remember films first seen in our youth. Even the best examples of horror, (Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm St. and alike) can often look dated, crappy and lame to eyes witnessing them for the first time, many, many years after their release. Sometimes these judgements can be unfair, not considering the time when the film was first relevant. Other times it can give clarity to a film’s short coming and missed opportunities. Now, with my self-justifying out of the way, let’s turn our attention back to Pet Semetary. Adapted from King’s popular novel of the same name, box-office wise this film is probably his most successful page to screen horror adaptation, King is even credit as writing the script. This alone is reason for a remake. It appears as though King may have been too close to the project, as the pace is slow, taking way too much to time to get to the inevitable and some subplots seem pointless. King seemingly didn’t have the objectivity to self edit. The Shining and Carrie, while based on King’s books were written for the screen by other writers, namely filmmakers, who could cut away the fat and get to the guts of the story all the while keeping a visual language in mind. From the very beginning of Pet Semetary we know the cat will die, the kid will die and everything will go horribly wrong for this generic family. It just takes so long to get there. A remake could pace it up, get to the kid dying quicker, which is really the drama of the story, and maybe spend more time with this evil re-incarnated baby. Another thing a remake could address is numerous the subplots. The whole thing about the wife’s complex with death and her strange back story involving a hideously disabled sister can go or be made relevant. There’s also the seemingly unnecessary feuding between the father and the wife’s family which comes to a ridiculously over the top head at the baby’s funeral. And what about the freaky house keeper who commits suicide? What was the point of her? Was she some sort of red herring? Perhaps this is all explained and relevant in King’s book, but on screen it really doesn’t work. I also thought that the resurrecting should have taken place in the actual pet cemetery instead of the miles away in the sacred Navaho site. Despite rendering the title pointless, it is hard to believe the father of the story could be convinced to trek all the way to this site not being told where he is going and what will happen there, let alone dragging a body there. Maybe all this could have been made more palatable had the actors been better. While Fred Gwynne (of The Munsters) is probably the best of a bad bunch, the rest are terrible, especially the mother (Denise Crosby of Star Trek the Next Gen.) and who ever the little girl was who played the whinging brat of a daughter, she should have been the one hit by the truck! A the heart of it all I really think there is a good story, creepy, dramatic and full of the kind of conundrums that make an audience think “Would I do the same?” it just deserves to be presented in a more considered and cinematic way.
A creepy, unnerving horror movie about moral choices. Do we go through with something to satisfy our own needs, even if the act is something we know to be morally wrong or even dangerous? I love how the film gives us a chance to get to know the characters a little before thrusting us into the middle of the craziness. Character/story build up is something often overlooked these days. The dialogue may have been a little weak at times, but it’s not the fault of the actors, as they are all well accomplished performers. It’s amazing to see little Miko Hughes in such a young role…well before his days on Full House and in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.
Pet Sematary is a classic in every right. A creepy movie based on a REALLY creepy novel!
Even though its dated I still think it a scary film even now.
One of my all time favorite movies. Truly creepy.
this movie is scary, which is an achievment that many films don’t get to. I thought that the child was scary and the ending was weird but the movie shows one thing, sometimes Dead is better
Its good, but i like the second one better.
DINT WORK 4 ME……MAY HAV BEEN A CLASSIC IN ITS TIME BT LOOKS PRETTY OUTDATED WID D EFFECTS ND SEVERLY LACKS PACE OR THRILL…..FOUND D ACTIN BELOW PAR(MAYB WID A STRONG LEAD IT CULD HAV BEEN WATCHABLE)……..
This is one hell of a story. It’s very compelling and creepy, and deserves to be among some of the most entertaining horror movies out there. However, I do understand why some people do not like this film. It might be considered an out-dated b-movie with weak acting and some lame effects. But it’s so much fun!
Saw this when i was 5 or 6 pretty good from what i can remember.
“I don’t wanna be buried inna pet sematary/I don’t live this life again”. How do ya spell sematary, cematry, cematary; anywho? Cemetry. Fuck it. Watch it.
Love it. Has one of my pet hates in it tho (ankle injuries….ergh) but it’s really scary and just good.
Definitely one of the best if not the best King adaptation.
The father in the movie displayed one of the single worst acting performances know to mankind! That alone destroyed the movie for me. The Pascow idiot appearing like a made for t.v. ghost…… shit this movie felt made for t.v., sucked!
I read the terrific novel ages ago but for some reason I never managed to watch the movie – a shame because “Pet Sematary” is definitely one of the better King-adaptations: eerie, suspenseful, thrilling and thankfully it never gets boring.
It’s packed with great acting performances (most notably Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby and the awesome child actor Miko Hughes), haunting and creepy-looking settings (the pet cemetery looks so absolutely awesome!), some super-scary scenes (the opening scene, the spinal meningitis girl, the zombie kid, the walk to the burial ground…) and even some superb gore. The script is tight and perfectly paced (written by King himself), Elliot Goldenthal’s soundtrack is wonderfully haunting and the camera work is just excellent.
A beautiful and timeless horror movie, thumbs up!
i always liked how this movie was dark and depressing. the thought of having to bury your child is hard to comprehend, but that child coming back undead is unfathomable. the brief history that the old man tells the father about the pet cemetary is fucking freaky. this is a movie that needs your imagination to make it complete. the sick sister upstairs moaning all day? this is a great movie. highly reccomended!
There is something about this movie that just grabs at you. It may be the atmosphere of the town, the well directed actors, or just the overall story line, but something about this is really creepy and intimidating. This isn’t my favorite movie, and as time goes by it begins to fall a little flat, but you could do much worse in your hunt for a scare than by visiting Pet Sematary.
Great movie, very well made, well directed, well acted and has something special that catches us from the beginning, really a gem that you never get tired of seeing. A true classic. I do not respect someone who says he does not like this movie.
Love it. It’s a classic that’s still creepy
love this
Pure greatness
by far one of the creepiest movies I’ve ever had the fortune of seeing.
I’ve always had a soft spot for children in horrors, so it makes this movie even more unsettling for me.
I went to bed that night, with the child repeating in my head: “no fair……..no fair…..”
I couldn’t go to sleep for a while.
I thought it was a cool little movie, almost bedtime story like, in a creepy way. The atmosphere was eery but not an overly terrifying movie. The character of “Zelda” seems to frighten lots of movie-goers. It’s a fun ride but not what I would call “compelling” in any way, like King’s other works like Cujo and Carrie.
One of the first horror movies I ever saw. This movie still creeps me out to this day. I just recently read the novel which is done by Stephen King (the only Stephen King novel I have ever read) and it is great, it’s amazing how incredibly similar the movie is to the book. A lot of the time a movie will just base it’s story on the book, but this movie takes so many scenes directly from the book that when you read it you can picture the parts of the movie in your head, and you picture each of the actors who portray the characters. I fucking love this movie, and the sequel is pretty fun too, but not as epic this one. If you haven’t seen this movie, what the fuck are you waiting for?!?!
I am stunned by the other reviews here. One of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Most of the acting is abysmal, with the exception of Fred Gwynne and the child. No suspense – you know what is going to happen almost from the outset. The final shot of the movie is laugh-out-loud stupid.
Those who describe this as one of the best King adaptations apparently haven’t seen very many. The Dead Zone, The Shining, Carrie… Pretty much every other adaptation is better.
I first watched Pet Sematary when I was very, very young. I didn’t know that it was a horror movie, and the eerie opening didn’t cause my feeble young mind to turn away. It only pulled me in more, because I thought it was going to be a nice little movie about cute animals! Boy, was I wrong. After my first viewing of PS it never left my mind, because it had terrified me so much I had to sleep with a nightlight for weeks.
Now that I’m older I can appreciate the movie for what it is, more than just a scary tale but also something with a thought provoking meaning and in my opinion truly the best King movie and novel (and I’ve read a lot of Stephen King, he’s my favorite author). The acting is perfect, and it has a certain campy feeling that just works with this kind of movie. It’s sad how most people overlook this one, in reality it deserves much more love than some King movies get. For example, The Shinning, which was a poor adaptation of King’s wonderful novel.
One thing that makes the movie even more amazing is that it wasn’t just made to frighten the viewer. It was also made to make you think. Many say that the main character, Louis Creed, is an idiot for most of his actions, but you really have to place yourself in his shoes and think. What would you do in his situation? Especially near the end, he (spoiler alert) has for sure gone insane. That’s why he does what he does to his wife. If you had the power to bring someone back from the dead, someone very close to you, such as your wife, your daughter, your son, you would be a liar if you said the thought never crossed your mind.
This will always be one of my favorites.