A kid had to face the world in his own animated version and conquer life's biggest monster. ANI (The Harvest) It's as if a child's imagination is a safe haven, a place where the world is a playground for all the possibilities the mind could think of. And even the tight and humble space called home, situated on a busy Metro could not hinder the inquisitive headspace of a young Mithi (played by Zyren Dela Cruz), a boy who accomplishes the day by playing with his colorful toy robots that perform a vital role in his imaginary narrative. With a loving father and a mother that sings him a self-assuring lullaby, Mithi is blissfully unaware of the harsh reality. But life decided to toy with his fate, and Mithi's perfect little world is now showing its cracks, putting his vulnerability to the test and slowly depriving him of his happiness he thought would last forever. And through his eyes, the world suddenly transforms itself into a menacing monster. Set in a lush ...
"Pet Sematary" Review - King's Classic Parades New Scares
A family of four moved in to a house near by a communal pet cemetery. Due to an untimely incident, the father made a rather reckless decision of bringing back the dead, opening the door for the greater evil to walk among them.
Stephen King's movie adaptations have been notorious of falling under the hit-or-miss club. It's not that the original material is bonkers, it's just that, some of them is almost impossible to squish in into an hour or two, where so much stuff that made the book interesting needs to be removed due to time constraints.
Most of them operate better on film only if a much intellectual rewrite were done to fit the rules of the cinematic storytelling, such as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining from 1980, which King himself isn't a huge fan of, but the critical and commercial success tell otherwise.
Sometimes Dead is Better
Pet Sematary, once deemed to be one of the most gnarly works of King that even himself held it off of publishing due its extremely jarring nature. It was green lit a film adaptation back in '89 under Stephen King's screenplay and Marry Lambert's directorial lead where it became an instant hit and as time goes by, established itself as a cult classic.
The popularity doesn't stop there, and much like its distant and more desired brother IT, this film did not escape the otherwise inevitable remake, which no one asked for except those 3 kids at the back who were avid horror-cliche fanatics.
Yes, you read it right. Absolute, in-your-face bloated and formulaic cliche, especially in the first act. The movie opened with a bird's eye view perspective of a forest and then switches into the inside of a car which introduces us to the Creed family as they talk about moving-in in their new house. As if it wasn't recently done before in Jordan Peele's Us or any other films for that matter but hey, whatever works.
It's not that the formula is bad for the movie though. In fact, it helped create the eerie atmosphere of the film in which the director Kevin Kolsch and co-director Dennis Widmyer purposely and quite creatively used for the film's own advances. It also helps that Jordan Clarke and Amy Seimetz as the the parent duo, Louis and Rachel Creed really commits to the role when it comes to selling their performance throughout the film. Their two children, Jete Laurence and Hugo Lavoie as Ellie and Gage, were also quite remarkable especially Laurence's performance towards the second arc. Added to the mix, and a welcome at that, is John Lithgow as Jud, the every-old-guy-in-an-old-house movie figure.
The film follows the Creed family as they move in into this secluded house near a pet cemetery. A road incident happened that killed their daughter's cat. Louis, with the help of Jud, buried the animal at the pet cemetery, unknowingly succumbing himself at a ritual which allows deceased animals to be reanimated, only this time, behaved in a sinister manner.
You see, I respect the first act and what it tried to do to be convincing but I thought the movie starts to really get its gears grinding on the second act. Wow. It was such a huge upgrade to the original. It was very disturbing and the rare jump scares really works and got me mildly (or extremely) squeaking off and laughing at myself at the same time. It was jolting. There were some parts that I wished weren't so mindlessly instigated through exposition dump in comparison to the original. I am not sure what to feel about the ending but otherwise the film is really an elevated version of the original film and is closely homogeneous to the books.
I might say though, the trailers for this film is very very spoiler-y. Avoid the trailers at all costs.
Let's Be Reel
I admire the retelling of this cult classic. Kolsch and Widmyer's version might seem a little too familiar at the beginning but the way it developed was truly spooky and terrifying. Bar the few uninspired lines and stupid decision making of the characters, I thought Pet Sematary really catapulted itself as one of the okay ones, probably not the best, King adapted flick.
There are two kinds of horror: the one that is too riveting that it leaves an aftershock and the other one too ridiculous and funny that the horror aspect of it is drowned by stupidity. Pet Sematary sits perfectly in the middle.
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