Pet Sematary (1989, Mary Lambert)

"Pet Sematary" has one thing many of King's better works don't have: a great ending. A great final act, too, which is where a lot of other King novels fall apart a bit. This one really comes together. It's a good story too, a disturbing one, and one of the saddest examinations of a family falling apart, a theme King is fond of. Especially because unlike something like "The Shining", there was no strain on the familial relationships at the beginning of the story. Still, it's not one of King's better novels because there's some notably bad prose ('time was slipping through his hands like something that had been greased' is a particularly egregious example of this), but for the most part it's really very good, and it's a great example of how you can write a horror story which doesn't even really become one until nearly halfway through.

"Pet Sematary", the film, is around as good, and is definitely one of the better King adaptations. The screenplay, written by King himself, is terrific, with all the additions and subtractions from the source material making total sense, and no dialogue that stood out as particularly bad to me. Even more pleasingly, most of the psychology at play in the book is present in the filmic version, and I'm becoming increasingly confident that King is the best person to bring his own work to life on the screen as a screenwriter. Even "The Stand", a miniseries I thought dreadfully poor as far as the direction and the general production went, was generally pretty well-written.

The film's major flaw is the acting, with the only really good performance coming from Fred Gwynne, who played Judd. King is a master of atmosphere, and very rarely do the settings his stories play out in come to life well on screen. As many problems as I (controversially) had with "The Shining", Kubrick's Overlook was every bit as good as King's Overlook. Likewise, Mary Lambert and the cinematographer do a great job making this film as effectively creepy as it is, and the pet cemetery and burial ground are tremendously well-realized. Also, the climactic stages of the film could not have possibly been done better. The whole last half hour is absolutely one of the creepiest bits of film ever made.

Had the film featured a better overall cast and had a better-realized Zelda, it really could have been one of the best horror movies ever made, but I found it immensely satisfying in its own right, and Gage Creed makes every other creepy child in cinema history look cute and cuddly in comparison. "I've got something for you, mommy".