A protagonist with excellent aesthetic (turtle neck short sleeves and dungarees)
Anna moves from Sapporo to her relatives to convalesce – a concept that we really should bring back – and finds herself feeling like a foreigner. Partly because she's an outsider in the small town, partly because of her isolation from everyone else, and partly from an insignificant physical feature which doesn't disadvantage her in any other way. It's a bit thin.
Gorgeous scenery, slightly odd fantasy times and I went to “imaginary friend” quite quickly... tho they almost retcon it in at the end.
about 20 minutes in and I've clocked the premise of this movie because I have watched far too much Doctor Who and this is like the key premise of multiple episodes
In fairness it is pretty fast paced, and at least has some kind of twist (which was initially pretty daft), and the “kids in sticky situations” interaction could have been worse.
whether time flies or not while you're watching this... your mileage may vary
A woman befriends a couple of teenagers, but this quickly turns into a deadly obsession.
So I was excited when I saw Octavia Spencer was in this. But the climax which reveals Ma's motivation fell flat. With an almost naive
Parts of the storyline just hang a bit loose. It's the story of the evil Black woman in a nice white town, and I don't even think this is too spoilery. There are truly bizarre torture scenes which are nonsensical rather than terrifying.
Same as the novel, the Creed family moves house, where they discover a burial ground near the house with a secret.
The same human urges: abhorring death and clinging to life, exceptionalism (“it won't happen to me”, “it'll be different this time”)
Pet Semetary treads very well-established ground for King stories. The conduit of evil is the American, white, middle-class man with repressed emotions and a Troubled Past; horror is tied up with disability*; an overwrought ending.
I enjoyed reading the book, but seeing it in movie format makes it lose a little of its shine.
SPOILERS BELOW THIS CUT
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In particular, one of the characters' driving source of fear centers around her disabled, bedbound relative. But it's not so much about her guilt for wanting that relative dead – although that was explicitly stated – it focused more on the physical aspect. A scene leading to the climax has that character seeing herself become that relative. The creators of this film used physical disability as shorthand for horror and “unlife” – as with “undead” – and that is unacceptable.