9. Pet Sematary (1989)
The Creed Family move to small town Maine from Chicago. They makes friends with their elderly neighbour Jud who brings them up to a graveyard where kids have buried their dead pets - mainly killed on the busy road Jud and the Creeds live on. Louis Creed is working as a doctor. He treats a young man with serious injuries sustained in a car crash. Before he dies, this young man warns Louis about the pet cemetery. The Creed's cat Church is killed on the busy road over Thanksgiving. Jud, rather stupidly, introduces Louis to an Indian burial ground beyond the pet cemetary. Louis buries Church there and he comes back as a kind of hideous zombie cat. Even greater tragedy is in store for the Creeds when their cute little toddler Gage is knocked down and killed on the busy road. Despite a heck of a lot of warnings, Louis gets his dead son Gage and inters him in the Indian grave yard. Gage comes back... But he is not the same Gage. Louis must face up to what he effectively unleashed on the world and cope with considerable personal sorrow in a creepy finale. I like Pet Sematary a lot. It was one of those films that really freaked me out as a child. Zombie Gage Creed is terrifying, running amok with one of his father's scalpels. The atmosphere of the film, thanks to director Mary Lambert remains sinister the whole way through the film. The death of Gage is horribly realistic and terribly traumatic. After seeing what happened to Church in the Indian Burial Ground, and also after receiving many pleas for reason, Louis still goes ahead and buries Gage - an act of desperation even though he knows in his heart it will end in tragedy. The film really benefits from a solid cast with some great acting. The film is a good horror film, but it is not in the same league as The Shining or Carrie. It is faithful to King's book and King himself wrote the script. Mary Lambert does a competent job in directing the novel, but one wonders what a horror film Maestro - like George Romero (who was initially put down to direct the film) could have achieved in bringing out the darker tones of the film. But still the film adaptation of Pet Sematary is a polished and eerie production for King fans to enjoy.