Place 4: Pet Sematary
- Released: 1989
- Director: Mary Lambert
Pet Sematary is one of the best-known novels by Stephen King and certainly deserves a successful adaptation. The first one from 1989 is significantly better than the remake from 2023.
The family of doctor Louis Creed moves into a nice little house near an animal cemetery. Soon, eerie events unfold as the supposedly dead animals come back to life. When a tragic accident happens, the events escalate. The story plays with themes of grief and coping with loss, and offers some of the scariest moments in Stephen King’s work.
The adaptation achieves this partly with a great child actor, Miko Hughes, who plays the little son Gage. Without giving away too much: The boy provides real goosebumps, and the image of him will likely stay in the memory of most who have seen the film. Stephen King later said that Pet Sematary disturbed him more than any of his works – and the adaptation comes very close to achieving that (via galaxypress.com).
