I used to read a ton of Stephen King. Carrie, The Shining, Salem's Lot, The Stand--I definitely preferred his older material to his older material. And while in recent years I haven't read him as much, I still sometimes pop in and read a book or two. Most recently it was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon...
...and then a remake of Pet Sematary was announced and I decided to read the other older Stephen King book I never got around to. Of course I knew the story and all of its incredibly dark, nihilistic beats: almost everyone knows them: the evil cat, the road, the truck, and the little boy...
...so I knew the story, and this movie treads that path. It changes enough of the material to be fresh and riveting. Of course the biggest change--which child is killed at the midway point--was revealed in the trailers. And while this change was very effective, giving that brilliant young actress a lot of room to play, it would have been nice to preserve the shock of the moment. I could purely imagine the moment that the young boy is spared and the young girl is killed and everyone in the theater goes: "OH WHAT?"
My biggest problem with the movie is one of tone and pacing. First of all, the pacing, which also includes the editing: it is almost a hack job. Scenes and shots are cut sometimes awkwardly, quickly, and jarringly. The beginning of the movie moves well, briskly, giving us breathing room, but it escalates quickly, quickly, and then everything is bonkers. You can tell there was a lot left on the cutting room floor which is a shame considering how the actual story--one of Indian burial grounds, Wendigos, and the things that go bump in the night--is one built on pure dread.
And then there comes the tone. The movie starts off like a thriller: something is wrong, we can tell, but we don't know what. Then we start to get clues...the clues don't fall in, they fly in quickly, flung left and right, the movie moving. Jud, who in the book is given time to unwind his horrifying stories, is relegated to the side, his words more background to the fast-moving images on screen. By the end, with the mass of murder and mayhem, I was left feeling like the movie became...goofy. Yes, it was dark. Stephen King called it nihilistic. And if put in a serious context it is incredibly dark. But I can't help but watch it and shake my head. It's not the kind of goofy where you want to laugh, but it's the kind of goofy where the train leapt off the rails, sprouted wings, and is now flying overhead while signing a punk song.
Technically the movie was good: the cinematography and sound were amazing. The acting was great as well, with everyone (particularly young Ellie) working the soul of their characters.
The thrill of the novel--and even the original, somewhat schlocky movie--was its tense build-up. The first four-hundred pages lead to the final fifty pages of pure mayhem and horror. This movie tried to do it and fell down, but managed to drag itself to the end. It worked, but it wasn't effective.
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