Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (1989) review

Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (1989)
Directed by: Mary Lambert
Cinematography by: Peter Stein

I have currently been reading Stephen King's Pet Sematary and wanted to watch the film. The film its self does not directly relate to my film at all but I wanted to talk about it in my blog as It made me think how important the opening of a film can be. I am currently working on a ink based film that I hope to use for the very start of my time-lapse film.

Pet sematary is about a family that has just moved to an empty place. Not long after they move, their cat is killed by the road. Being very sad, the father takes the cat to a cemetery for pets that is neat by. It brings the cat back to life. All is good, until the son is killed and the dad doses the same thing to this child as he did the cat. I will be looking at the opening sequence.

It opens up with paramount’s logo so you know it’s got a decent budget and you assume it will be at least ‘semi’ good. I believe it was, I really enjoyed watching it.

From the opening font of Pet Sematary (formal white writing with slanted T, a jet black background and spooky music) you straight away get a feel about what the film genre is, horror (this is one of the reason why I selected it to analyse as my exam film will have aspects of horror). As black is the darkest colour you can get, it is simplistic of nothingness, the end, death. The white is the lightest colour you can get which could symbolise a ghost or supernatural feel to the film without even reading the text. I will be thinking very closely at the font in my film to give the right impression of the film right from the start.

Pet Sematary opens with a close up of a small round glass jar surrounded with greenery. At this point it does not give a great deal away but you can tell it is outside and that it is going to continue to zoom out slowly revealing the rest of the shot.

As it zooms out you can start to make out a small old looking wooden cross and then you hear a young girl’s voice saying “bye little chef, see you in heaven”. It does not tell the audience that this is a grave of a little girl’s pet, but it gives you all the clues so you can figure it out, I like this idea of letting the audience figure things out for them self’s and hope to also display this in my new film. From what it looks like it is not a very well kept cemetery in the film from the mise-en-scene as all the white paint of the cross is chipped and there are leaves, branches and moss surrounding the cross. It is not until you hear the spooky unclear talking that is playing under the echo of the girls’ voice that you truly get the feel that it is going to be supernatural. In my exam film I will be twisting between supernatural and real insanity, I also plan to use an echo in my film to give the impression of not really being there, an echo of the past.

Pet Sematary continues to play the spine-chilling music and zooms out revealing more of the scene, giving you more information that it is not just one grave at a bottom of the garden but a massive run down pet cemetery that goes on for ever almost. As the camera moves to show you more of the graves, you keep hearing voices all blending in to each other of children saying good bye to their pets, but you do not see them so you can assume with the dilapidation of the place and the voices that it used to be a ‘well used’ pet cemetery but for years has not been looked after or even used, just taken over by weeds and wildlife (you see a skunk run by).

It isn’t until it shows you more of the area that you see just how big it really is, 100s and 100s of old graves with pet names on with old worn pet toys laid about with no bright colours or anything like flowers about which adds to the effect that it has not been used for years and that death is all-around. All this information is before the credits have even stopped showing. The director Mery lambert does this to set the scene to show you what to expect and get you in the mood to be scared!

My own thoughts personally of this movie are that it was very well gone and works well with the book it was set on. Some of the points in the film could have been development more like how the ground brings people back from the dead but apart from that a very good film.