When the Creed family first arrives in rural Ludlow, everyone is captivated by the calm ambience. And that includes us, the audience, as well. However, typical of Stephen King, the calm would not last long. Something strange and mysterious is hidden within it. That leads us to an estranged strange cemetery perched a few metres away. The board reads the details: pet sematary.
Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s directorial attempt is the 30-year celebration of the original film, Pet Sematary. The remake, of course, unleashes Stephen King’s imaginative power of mystery. Before all the hell breaks loose, everything remains peaceful and intact. Our concern, however, is if it is worthy enough.
As a novelist of the horror genre, Stephen King stands impeccable. He has nourished Hollywood with his works of horror. This writer remembers watching Carrie (1976) after reading the book. Carrie contains ample substance in comparison to Pet Sematary. There is one central figure, and that is the girl with telekinetic power. Carrie has no friends. She is shy. She is the easy target of college bullies. Plus she has a domineering fanatic mother. What’s up now? These characteristics alone would bring together an interesting story towards a well-workable plot.
What the Pet Sematary lacks is such an attribute. Worse, the psychological complexity found in King’s work has been mutilated in the screenplay.
Stephen King moulds Dr Creed as a passive father who cannot stand his daughter. But Matt Greenberg (screen story) and Jeff Buhler (screenplay) capsize this phenomenon. This is a natural instance where the scriptwriter would take liberties to adapt the novel to cater to that specific spectacle. Unlike the novelist, the scriptwriter and the filmmaker share many limitations under the sky. Yet such liberties have created discord between the books and the movies. As a result, most bibliophiles would naturally stick to the book and abhor the widescreen.
King dedicates a few paragraphs to elaborate Dr Creed’s not-so-impassionate attitude when his daughter is injured. Dr Creed becomes an extremely caring father in the hands of the screenwriters. It is doubtful if this modification really serves the purpose of the plot. The father-daughter relationship is the axis around which the plot evolves. And King had obvious reasons to make the relationship passive. Upon his daughter’s sudden death, what Dr Creed feels is more than sorrow. He develops pangs of guilt over his actions while she was alive. This obviously leads to a trauma within the father’s psyche, which leads him to do the unfathomable. That’s where you stand glued to the seat with the book on hands. But I felt like getting up when I saw a different father in the movie.
Greenberg and Buhler have written for the audience, but King has tackled the psychological phenomenon of the father. In my honest opinion, however, Buhler has made things easy for the directors and Jason Clarke who plays Dr Creed’s role. In Clarke, we haven’t got much to see except for some scenes of student he failed to save, spooky and unnecessarily recurrent.
The movie opens with a blood trail. Blood is a periodic element in the movie. That hardly demands attention and seems kind of overwrought.
That said, the work has its constructive features as well. The undercurrent theme is the takeaway point. We may come across instances where the death could be brought back to life. But it will not be the same person. The mystery lies beyond the pet sematary woods.
Death, resurrection and life after death is nothing new to the Sri Lankans, especially the majority of Sinhalese Buddhists who are into exorcist activities. We have heard enough of pretas and bhootas, the local zombies, who were earlier our own beloved relatives. But they won’t be the same, however much we would like them to be.
Let the dead rest. Once dead, they won’t be the same however much you would prefer them to be. Even if you inject life to the lifeless form of your beloved one, you would not get the very person you loved. Horribly enough, you may face a worse experience and even have to pay by your own life when you attempt to resurrect the dead.
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