Dr. Louis Creed and his family have decided to move away from Boston and settle down in rural Maine in order to live a more quiet life, and give Louis more time with his family: Rachel, his wife, Ellie, his daughter, and Gage, his young son. Their new home seem to be peaceful and nice…except for the highway being located right outside where heavy trucks keep roaring by all the time. They soon discover a pet cemetery close by (where a lot of the pets have been victims of said trucks), where children have buried their beloved pets for a long time. The place holds a power that is by no means good, however, something the Creed family is about to discover in the most horrible way.
“Pet Sematary” is one of Stephen King’s most famous novels, and is actually based on his own close encounter with a truck nearly killing his own son. He got the inspiration after his time at the University of Maine at Orono, where he was teaching for a year as a gesture of gratitude for the education he had received there. During that time, he and his family rented a house near a busy road who had claimed the lives of numerous pets in the neighborhood, and the children there had created a pet cemetery near the house King and his family rented. They also had a cat at the time: Smucky. Unfortunately, Smucky became one of that road’s victims, and King’s daughter Naomi buried it in that pet cemetery. Shortly thereafter, King’s son Owen had a close call running toward the road. All of this gave him the inspiration for this novel, but after writing it he felt he had gone too far with the subject matter and discarded the idea of having it published. However, since he needed to publish a final book for his contract, he reluctantly submitted it to Doubleday. And of course, it became an immediate success.
Now, for those of us that have read the book and seen the first movie adaption, it’s hard not to make comparisons. There are quite a few things that have been changed completely here. The first adaption from 1989 actually follows the book more closely than this one, but at the same time I also think that this new adaption captures the dark and tragic tone a lot better, as it is a story that deals with something that all of us know but always dread to think or talk about: the death of loved ones, and how far we would be willing to go if we could reverse it.
I was also quite curious about how they would depict Zelda (Rachel’s sister), who was slowly dying in a horrible and painful way from spinal meningitis while turning into a hideous “monster” (and, since the illness turned her clinically insane, also made her bitter and mean towards Rachel), and this has given Rachel PTSD-like symptoms. I actually think Zelda is one of the creepiest parts of the whole story, and it also plays a major factor over explaining why Rachel is struggling so much with everything that’s got to do with death. While there has been some changes regarding Zelda’s death in this movie, I actually think that the book’s version of Zelda’s demise was better…but yeah, I know why they did it, as it gave them a perfect setting to make some creepy scenes and jump-scares.
Overall, this new movie adaption of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” is a well made horror movie, and despite some differences it manages to capture a lot of the original feelings of dread from the book, while also leaving enough space for both movie adaptions to exist on their own.
Directors: Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer
Country & year: USA, 2019
Actors: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed, Alyssa Brooke Levine, Maria Herrera, Frank Schorpion, Linda E. Smith, Sonia Maria Chirila
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0837563/
A masked serial killer turns a horror-themed amusement park into his own personal playground, terrorizing a group of friends while the rest of the patrons believe that it is all part of the show.
“Ghostwatch” is a live-documentary that was broadcasted on Halloween night on British national television in 1992. The show opens in a studio at BBC with the dry elderly host Michael Parkinson in suit and tie, saying “The program you’re about to watch is a unique live investigation of the supernatural. It contains material that some viewers may find to be disturbing.” Then we get introduced to the “most haunted house in England”, a council house in North London, where a single mother and her two young daughters are being tormented by poltergeist activity. With BBC’s reporters, cameras and some paranormal investigators in place, they’re ready to hopefully get some paranormal activity on tape for the whole of Britain to see live. The studio also has a phone-number the viewers can call during the broadcast to share their own experiences with the paranormal. Further into the investigation we learn that the family is apparently haunted by a male ghost called Pipes, who likes to hide behind the curtains in the children’s bedroom. We even see a manifestation of him in the children’s bedroom after they’ve gone to sleep, and things starts to get from bad to worse while the cameras keeps rolling.
The Wilson family owns a vacation house near the beach in Santa Cruz. Adelaide, the wife in the family, had an experience at that beach when she was a little girl and has no desire at all to revisit the place. Her husband convinces her to go there, however, together with the Tyler family to have a good time. Things don’t go as well as planned for, and back at the vacation house that night things turn even worse. Four mysterious people dressed in red appears outside the house, breaking in and terrorizing them. What’s even worse, is that all of these strangers look exactly like themselves…
Jong-Goo is a police officer that lives a quiet life in a little village with his wife and daughter. One day he is called to the scene of a gruesome multiple murder case, where a family member of the murdered people is covered in blood from the victims. His skin is covered in strange boils, and he appears to be in a state of stupor. Soon, more incidents similar to this occur all over the little village, and some of the villagers start to blame a newcomer to the area: a Japanese man (played by Jun Kunimura, known for his roles in “Ichi The Killer”, “Audition” and “Kill Bill”) who’s taken residence in the woods. Jong-Goo starts a battle against time to figure out what is happening, as his daughter also starts showing the symptoms.
Loch Ness Scotland, 1976: a group of resarchers are hunting for Nessie. They dive into the lake and find one of her eggs, and guess what happens next: a pissed off CGI Nessie suddenly shows up, goes on land in full rampage mode and devours them. Amongst them is the son of one of the resarchers, who witnesses his father getting eaten. He manages to get away, and fast-forward to present day he has grown up to hunt down Nessie and have his revenge. He wanders around with a cigar and dresses like someone cosplaying a lone-wolf-cowboy with a scar on his face. And whenever he enters a scene we hear a classic western tune, just to make sure to the audience knows that he’s the hero and not one to be fucked around with…which makes it cheesy as hell. No charisma, no screen presence. Someone call Danny Trejo, please. Anyway: during his hunt for the monster, he stops by Lake Superior somewhere in Canada where he believe Nessie’s hidden. Why Nessie decided to travel so far and take residence in a lake in Canada, you may ask? Well, because. We also get introduced to some teenagers you couldn’t care less about, who gets ready for a boat trip, only set up to be killed and eaten.
When strange events occur in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, a doctor specializing in the paranormal, her colleague, and an ex police officer decide to investigate further.
As I had always thought that The Exorcist was William Friedkin’s one and only pure horror movie, I didn’t know what to expect from this slightly obscure little film called “The Guardian” when it finally came into my radar. So let’s check it out.
Carol Anne has now moved to her uncle and aunt at the John Hancock Center in Chicago where she attends a special school for gifted children and visits a psychologist regularly. She would prefer to not talk about the past, but the shrink hypnotizes her to do so and can assure Carol Anne that talking about the past will make it go away. In this case it makes the dark forces enter her life again and a certain scary old man starts to manifest in mirrors and reflections. To quote Tangina: He’s back!