Review of Pet Sematary

In 1983, Stephen King published "Pet Sematary" with great reluctance. The story even scared him to death! In 1989, it was made into a movie with him writing the screenplay and playing a minister. This story follows the Creed family of father Louis, mother Rachel, young daughter Ellie (Eileen in the novel, Ellen in 1989 and Eleanor in 2019) as they move into their new home in Ludlow, Maine. The Creeds want the relaxation of country life, but this being a Stephen King horror, that might be hard to get! Jason Clark is great as Louis and so is Amy Steimetz as Rachel. Gage is played by twins while the awesome Jete Laurence plays Eleanor aka Ellie. Ellie is just a normal, run-of-the mile 8 soon to be 9 year old who loves her cat, Winston Churchill aka Church. She loves ballet and her new home in the country. Ellie goes out to explore her new digs and finds the graveyard for pets with the sign of pet cemetery misspelled. There is also a deadfall to keep people out from the grounds beyond the cemetery. Ellie climbs it and is startled by her new neighbor, Judson Crandall (John Lithgow). He is a rather gruff sort but Ellie thaws him out. What follows is one tragedy after another. A young African-American student at the college Louis doctors at dies on Louis' watch. Victor Pascow, the student Louis tried to save visits him as a ghost in order to warn Louis not to go over the deadfall. Rachel keeps remembering her fatally ill sister, Zelda who died when they were children. Rachel blames herself for Delta's death in the dumbwaiter. Church is killed by a car on Halloween and Rachel tells Louis not to tell Ellie about the death. Jud wants to help Louis with Church and he takes him beyond the deadfall to the burial grounds of the Micmac tribe. Louis buries Church in the grounds and goes home. As in all 3 sources, Church comes back and is mean as hell! He scratches Ellie and the final straw is when he almost attacks Gage in the crib. Louis almost puts the cat to sleep but Church seems like his old self. Louis lets him go and tells Ellie her cat ran away. Jud tells Louis that the burial grounds is evil and anything buried there will turn bad as well. One wishes Louis took that advice to heart! The next one to die is Ellie who is killed by a truck on her 9th birthday. This is the gender switch because Ellie a girl dies instead of Gage a boy. Louis sends his wife and son to her parents in Boston. He drugs Jud's drink and digs up his daughter. He buries her in the cursed ground. Jete Laurence is absolutely wonderful as the good Ellie and the evil, undead zombie Ellie! In the end, all the Creeds become zombies and they are like the Cullen family of "Twilight" but are zombies not vampires. I do wish for a sequel, but maybe a prequel is better. In many ways, this movie is better than the 30-year-old treatment and I thought this gender reversal worked! I thought Ellie was more scarier than Gage!