Hello friends, happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m back with another King read in my Stephen King Project – Pet Sematary, my 10th novel in this project.

I read this from August 27, 2023 – November 12, 2023 (2 1/2 months)

The Book (1983)

• This is off to a slow start, but the reader is intrigued to find out what is going to happen. This has the same feel that The Shining did when it started so this book has the potential to be really good or a copycat. I guess we’ll find out.
• We’re still moving at a slow pace, but things are beginning to set up. We see the pet ‘sematary’ for the first time and this sparks a lot of talk around pets dying. With all the talk that their cat won’t die right away makes the reader think the cat is going to die right away. Definitely invested to see where this goes.
• Instead of a pet dying, we have a college boy die on Louis’ first day of work and the creepiest of all is that kid knew about the ‘Pet Sematary’. It was one of the last things he said, talk about heebie-jeebies. This is still a slow progress, which the reader hopes will start to amp up soon.
• Things have taken a bit of standstill as Louis is still getting over the death of the kid – although the reader wonders if it’ll play more a role later on. The way King keeps bringing it up makes it feel like he’s foreshadowing something, we’re just not sure what yet. The way he’s written the little girl too is sorta creepy, like she knows more than she should for her age. Interesting stuff.
• Plots are starting to pick up as Church the cat dies… but doesn’t die?! Now the reader is on the edge of their seat wondering what really goes on in the Pet Sematary. The fact that their neighbour Jud seems to have the answers but is only revealing things in small doses makes it more creepy. Nothing like an old man who knows more than he should. Also the reader liked the Shining reference in this nice touch!
• Alright, so the reason Jud, the neighbour, showed Louis this trick of raising the dead was to appreciate death? Interesting. Church was dead, but now he’s alive… but he’s not how he used to be and slowly people are starting to notice, namely his daughter, Ellie. This is getting really dark and creepy, fully engaged!
• This book is getting darker and darker. One of our side characters passes away and this brings up the spiral of death that has touched upon each of the characters. It’s an interesting exploration into death and how it affects everyone differently. We are entering part 2 where it seems some foreshadowing with Gage and Church is happening.
• Just when you thought this book couldn’t get any darker… it just does. Part two opens with the death of a child and we see how it has traumatized everyone in its life. We learn more about the Pet Sematary and the fact that knowing about it can cause trouble. It’s such a fascinating look at death. We don’t know what will happen, but gosh is the reader on the edge of their seat!
• We are entering the grieving stage… but it looks like Louis is not about grieving his son. Instead, he’d like to try and bring him back from the dead?! Oh man, this doesn’t sound like it’s going to go well. The tension that is building with his daughter Ellie is so good. Even his wife Rachel is now on edge and she thinks the neighbour knows more. Oh it’s so creepy and tense, how’s it going to end?
• Things are really picking up. The chapters are getting shorter and we’re switching back and forth between points of view to build the tension. Rachel is trying to make it home, meanwhile Louis is out trying to unbury their son. Will she get home in time to stop him or will he get away with it?! We are fully alert and engaged to see what is going to happen next.
• We’ve reached the end of part 2, we’re still not sure if Louis was successful or not, but he’s done all that he can do. Unfortunately Rachel is still on her mission home, so now it’s just a wait and see situation. It’s all so creepy, but the back and forth POV has been chilling between Louis and Rachel. The reader is on the edge of their seat with anticipation how this will end.
• Well, the ending was going so well, the lead up was great – it was suspenseful, it created tension and was all around terrifying. Then in the last few chapters it just fell apart. The reader is slightly disappointed by the end, also what ever happened to Ellie? She was an integral part of the story, then she got dropped, didn’t make sense. The last bit was really creepy though.

Final thoughts: This was a well constructed story on death and what happens when you mess with it. King did a phenomenal job creating a world that really leaned into the unknown and brought a story to life. This went a lot darker than the reader ever expected it to go. From thinking this was just about bringing a pet back to life, to bringing a person back to life and one so young, was gut wrenching, terrifying and at times just pure sad. His pacing was great because it allowed for the tension to build up, for things to play out, even when the reader wasn’t exactly sure where he was going with the story, it always, for the most part, had a follow through. The ending was a little disappointing. It was going really well because it had a touch of predictability to it, but it really took some turns that we weren’t anticipating. It was in the last few chapters that King went a little off and the reader didn’t understand the point of changing to a point of view we haven’t heard from, was it supposed to make it scarier? An outsider seeing Louis and his warped world, because it just took the reader out of the story. We also never got a resolution with his daughter, who felt like an integral part of the story for so long, only for us not to hear about her or what happened to her. The characters in this were good and fleshed out, they and the plot had a deja vu feeling to the Shining, but over time this story started to feel more like its own, especially in plot. The characters had similar roles to those from the Shining, but we had more characters in this one to give us a more rounded cast for them to grow and develop around. In the end, this was a solid story that was creepy and haunting.

The Movies:

Pet Sematary (1989)

Pet Sematary: This movie followed the book pretty much to a T. There were changes made that the viewer isn’t really sure why they were made. For example, changing Jud’s wife, Norma, into Missy the Creed’s housekeeper. Norma didn’t play too much into the book so it makes sense to take her out of the film adaption… but Missy didn’t do anything for the film aside from complain… and then she killed herself. All of that could have been taken out. Maybe it was kept to help show death to a child, Ellie. Because in the book Lou and Rachel have two very different sides of how they should (or shouldn’t) teach their kids about death. Lou as a doctor is all about having them know it’s a part of life, while Rachel is strongly apposed to it because of what happened to her sister. The film does a good job of portraying that, but it’s definitely easier in a book to write it out than it is to show it in a film, so this did it well where it wasn’t too exposition heavy. They also changed the way that Rachel is getting back home to Lou after everything with Gage, but that didn’t bother the viewer so much because it was probably easier to film it the way it was done vs. in the book. We still got to the same conclusion. The viewer thought the scenes with the grandparents could have been taken out. They could have just said they’re going to their grandparents and left it at that. The one scene in particular, at the funeral, wasn’t needed at all, because there was basically no set up to it, it felt so out of left field. There were moments when the viewer knew what was happening but because liberties were taken with the film, it felt like pieces were missing; like if you didn’t read the book you’d question how they got from point A to point B, or how one scene connected with another. The viewer gets that the film couldn’t be 3 hours long (nor did they want that!) so within the run time of this film, it was concise; the scenes were as tight as they could be without giving the audience useless information; the acting was good, there was slight overacting at times, but for the most part everything felt believable. The cat they chose for this was super cute. The tension and the creepiness were still there, but this felt like it skipped over the build up to the grief. For the most part the viewer was engaged and enjoyed this adaption.  

Pet Sematary Two (1992)

Pet Sematary 2: This actually wasn’t a bad movie. This took a lot of elements from the original and sort of twisted it. In this film, everything that happened in the first is now a legend and everyone in the town knows what happened to the Creed family. It was cool to see little nods in the movie, like seeing the house and the mailbox briefly, then visiting the pet Sematary, which was probably the same set they used in the first. The new guy in town is now a vet and not a doctor. He and his son, Jeff, have already lost someone, their wife/mother, which you’d think would set up the grief plot really well, but this film felt less motivated by grief and more on fear. Like the characters already knew about the special place to bury the dead so they’d come back – they didn’t believe it at first, but when the dog comes back, well once someone dies, everyone starts to get buried there… and there were quite a few deaths. This film was also a lot gorier than the first. The first was more psychological thriller, this one felt more slasher the way everyone was hunted and killed. We got to the end of the movie and we’d kinda already forgotten about Jeff’s mother, but they bring it back and at this point hasn’t she been dead for months? How can they bring her back after that much time? That part felt like an afterthought, that they forgot the whole point of the first film and the book was about death, loss and grief and the sad part is, they set it up really well in the beginning for her to come back… only to wait until the very end, it didn’t feel like it added up. It was great that they set up the whole town, but if the kid who befriended Jeff already knew about the sematary, yeah try it on the dog first, then bury the mom, there were so many unnecessary deaths before they got to burying the mother. Aside from that though, this was still quite entertaining and the acting was good, well some better than others. The kid who plays Jeff was so emo and broody that it was perfect for this roll, like there were moments where he looked dead inside. As well as the actor who played the Sheriff did a great job of being creepy in such a subtle way. He went from mean to creepy really well. This was Anthony Edwards before ER, and he was really good in this, obviously not as good as ER considering this was a sequel in the 90s, which you could feel it was at times, but still good. It had this nostalgia quality to it, but was an overall captivating watch.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Pet Sematary: This was a less faithful adaptation, it didn’t follow the book chapter by chapter, line by line, yet it kept the essence of the book and original film, and it worked here. The story was still there, but told in a different way. We see the family move in, and they’ve aged up Ellie so she’s the one who goes out and discovers the Pet Sematary and that’s also how we meet Jud, who finds her. This version didn’t have a lot of Jud in it. He was around, and they showed that he was like family, but it felt like we barely saw him. This also of course took the wild turn of having it be Ellie instead of Gage, which was an interesting choice. They still had the same plot points, instead of Ellie having nightmares it’s Gage, and it’s Ellie who comes back. We’re not sure if it worked better, but they definitely could do more with Ellie and the fact that they aged her up too, she was able to be full on creepy and have it be more believable. The fears that this played into went hard on Rachel and her dead sister, they really leaned into that. The first half of the film felt like it sped by as everything started to set up for what was to come. There were a lot of short to the point scenes that made it feel like we were gaining all this info to then be used in the second half which went by a little slower as the scenes were longer and drawn out. It was still entertaining as the viewer had some idea about where it was going, but they didn’t know exactly how it would end. And oh poor Gage, that ending was terrifying, yet also satisfying when you realize what’s happening and how it will ultimately end. This was a good, if not kinda strange, maybe not really needed adaption that took the original and put what felt like a more modern day horror film spin on it.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)

Pet Sematary Bloodlines: The prequel no one asked for. My gosh was this ever slow; the build up to anything takes forever and it’s not even really worth all the energy it takes to get there, if anything, it made the viewer really bored. We’re taken back to 1969 with a young Jud, where we learn of the beginnings of the pet Sematary and what lays beyond it. It’s an interesting concept because it’s true, who was the one who found this and basically tested to see if what you buried came back? But this film was just boring with too much exposition and not enough actually happening. The viewer gets that going back to Jud’s life would be a great nod to the original work, but it wasn’t really needed because it’s exactly the story he told Lou, so it wasn’t anything truly new. It would have been better if this went all the way to beginning to the first burial; this film touched on that, but it was so quick and in a flashback, that if the whole movie had been that, maybe there would have been some merit to that. Otherwise, this was kinda pointless, not needed story that dragged on and wasn’t really scary. 

I also filmed my thoughts on the book if you’d like to check that out:

Up Next: Cycle of the Werewolf