Sorry but I don’t really know as I haven’t read the book like I wrote :)
Reading the internet, people are saying they are quite different after a certain point as I understand it.
And no, I’m not even sure what a Maine accent is except someone from Boston who can pronounce Newfoundland :)
I don’t remember the book super well but it seems like it was fairly faithful until the climax. Coincidentally, that’s about how long the movie holds up all right. (Though it still isn’t anything special to that point, aside from the creepy animal masks that play way, way too little of a role, and presents a couple of things in a way that makes them seem like generic supernatural horror haunting nonsense instead of key psychological points for the parents.) The ending is pretty awful, I’m sorry to say.
The Alamo Drafthouse preroll included footage from the original Wicker Man (a far better movie), and also introduced me to the following music video, which is also way creepier than this version of Pet Sematary and why, why is this a music video what the fuck:
God what a waste of time this movie is. The ending is awful. It felt slow and plodding, and Jud (played very well by John Lithgow) had even less motivation or understanding of what he was proposing then he should have. The dead sister of the wife subplot is incredibly wasteful and wasted in execution. A ghost shows up to warn off the father before anything even happens–it’s the equivalent of being told not to eat the steak when you weren’t even aware you had the possibility of getting one. I barely remember anything about the '89 movie or the book, and aside from the atmosphere and great stuff with the cat, this movie is just mostly crap.
— Alan
edit: also saw this at the Alamo but missed all of the pre-roll so thanks for that video!
Yeah, that really bothered me. “Thanks for telling me not to do the thing I didn’t know I could do. I guess I’ll do that now.”
Seconded.
My particular quibble: the property they bought had 50 acres. Which sounds big if you are 100% a city person? But my parents have ~250 acres, and it takes maybe 15 minutes to hike across the thing, and a lot less in a UTV. How do you buy 50 acres worth of land and not realize that it contains/adjoins an ancient and cursed death-swamp?
They’re city people. And it seems like they maybe didn’t even come up and look at the place in person first? At least they seemed surprised by some things about it.