[Editorial] Hearts of Darkness: Mary Lambert’s Return Trip to the Pet Sematary

The horror genre is no stranger to Stephen King adaptations and after the original property has proven popular, we are sometimes treated to sequels that decide to tell a different story in King’s universe. While it’s usually a different director that takes the helm, as is the case with The Shining (1980) and Doctor Sleep (2019), Carrie (1976) and The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), and the many Children of the Corn (1984) movies, when one of King’s most emotional tales, Pet Sematary (1989), was turned into a film by the wonderful director Mary Lambert, she also chose to return to direct the sequel three years later with Pet Sematary Two (1992).

The two films are very tonally different, and yet, Lambert’s presence throughout both of them ensure that they feel very much like two sides of the same story. Pet Sematary is definitely one of King’s most challenging tales, with the fear over the dead coming back to life somewhat sidelined for a deep study of grief, parenthood, and your core beliefs being challenged.

In Pet Sematary, Lambert knows how to handle this perfectly, and takes King’s book expertly from page to screen. Pet Sematary is one of the most faithful King adaptations, never skipping over the character building or the rawness of the grief that rips through the Creed family. However, when it comes to a sequel, Lambert chose to lean more into the goofy side of things to give us a completely different story, even if the plot beats are mostly the same. 

Pet Sematary tells the story of the Creed family coping with the loss of their young son, Gage. The father of the family, Louis, finds out from their neighbour, Jud, that there is a Native American burial ground beyond the local pet cemetery which can bring those buried in it back to life. 

Even though Louis has buried the family cat, Church, and seen the disastrous results, he spends most of the film battling with the idea of bringing Gage back to life. Logic has gone out the window at this point, and even though he is quite matter of fact about death at the beginning of the film, Louis rationalises that he has to at least try and bring Gage back to heal his family. 

While in Pet Sematary Two, the focus is shifted to teenage Jeff. In the opening of the film, he visits his actor mother, Renee, on location and watches on as she’s electrocuted in an accident. Jeff and his father, Chase, relocate to Ludlow to bury his mother in her hometown and try to get some peace from the toxic environment of LA. 

Jeff quickly makes friends with local boy Drew, whose step-father, Gus, is the controlling town sheriff. When Drew fails to keep his dog away from Gus’ rabbits, he shoots the dog, leading Drew to bury it in the burial ground. The dog returns from the dead violent and angry and ends up killing Gus. Trying to stay out of trouble, the boys bury Gus as well, and while he seems improved, to begin with, he soon leans into the violent ways of the other reanimated town residents. 

The parallels between the two stories are something that Lambert handles perfectly across the two movies. In Pet Sematary, we’re given a story from a parent’s perspective. To lose a child is every parent’s worst nightmare, and it’s especially hard for Louis to handle, as a doctor who feels he knows everything there is to know about death. In the sequel, we swap main characters to give the child’s point of view of what it’s like to lose a parent. Both Louis and Jeff witness the deaths of their loved ones, giving them trauma to heal alongside their grief. 

Placing Jeff as a teenager means he can effectively articulate his grief a little more than Louis’ daughter, Ellie, was able to in Pet Sematary, and so we’re able to see the different ways that loss affects different generations. Jeff shows that just because a character is younger doesn’t mean that their feelings aren’t valid, and they need to process things in their own way. 

Lambert also ensures the continuity is continued across both the films, so Pet Sematary Two feels like part of the same world, rather than a cash-grab sequel. Near the start of the film, Jeff rides his bike past the abandoned Creed property on the way to the pet cemetery. And on Halloween night, the local kids gather in the cemetery to tell the Creed story as a Ludlow urban legend. The local vet had direct experience with Church, and even the cemetery worker talks about when Louis snuck in to dig up Gage.

Much like the stories that Jud told Louis about different residents’ experiences with the burial ground, the Creed tale has just become part of the town’s lore but doesn’t stop people attempting to bring their loved ones back to life when they’re desperate. Just like Louis before them, everyone thinks they know better when it comes to bringing people or pets back to life. Through Pet Sematary Two, Lambert accurately shows that the residents of Ludlow will never learn, especially outsiders who move into town and don’t respect the traditions. The mistakes involving the burial ground will continue to be made, partly due to naivety and partly due to the power the burial ground has over the local area. 

Through both films, Lambert also shows how the different generations of the town react to the pet cemetery and the burial ground beyond it. In Pet Sematary, the focus is on how adults interact with the burial ground. Jud passes on tales of the ground’s past in order to warn Louis about going near it. Louis only takes his cat up to the burial ground because he trusts Jud so much, and not because he really believes that anything will happen when he does. And once he has experience of the burial ground, he hides his desire to go back there from Jud. He’s so ashamed that he sends his wife, Rachel, and Ellie out of town, and avoids Jud because he knows he will try to stop him. After seeing what happened to Church, he knows it’s foolish to travel back there, and yet his grief has pushed him to a place that he sees no other choice. 

However, in Pet Sematary Two, the main focus is on Jeff, Drew, and the rest of Ludlow’s children. They all know about the burial ground, sharing stories in hushed tones and as part of bully’s threats. While the adults all know about the Creed case, none of them mention the burial ground, or Louis’ intentions when he dragged his child and wife up into the woods. However, the kids are freer with their information sharing, and many of them seem to genuinely believe in the ground’s supernatural abilities.

Through the first movie and its sequel, Lambert manages to show how different people in Ludlow approach the burial ground and the grief that comes with losing a loved one. For the adult version of the story, Lambert focuses on deeper emotions at play. We spend a lot of time with Louis, Rachel, and Ellie as they grieve for Gage, and even more time with Louis as he struggles with the enormity of what he’s about to do. The scenes where he sneaks around town, digging up Gage, taking him to the burial ground, and returning home to wait for his return take up a huge portion of the movie’s third act. While we want to see the reveal of Gage returning from the dead, the real fear comes from the build-up and the unspeakable nature of what Louis is about to do. 

However, because Pet Sematary Two is the teen side of the story, the film feels like something teens are more likely to watch. It’s still an interesting study in grief, but there’s more death, more gore and gross bodily fluids in general, and both Jeff and Drew don’t fully think through the consequences of burying people in the burial ground. It seems like a quick fix to their problems, and so they make the most of it and deal with the consequences later. It takes the basics from Pet Sematary and turns them into something that feels more like an ‘80s gore slasher rather than an emotional rollercoaster. 

Of all the Stephen King movies out there, I think Pet Sematary was definitely the one that needed the same director across the original movie and the sequel. You can feel the similarities across both films in scenes like Gage’s funeral and Renee’s funeral, as well as the wide panning shots that show the full expanse of the burial ground towering above Ludlow. Mary Lambert knew exactly how to take King's story from the page to the screen, and the sequel allowed her to spend a little more time in Ludlow, and show the audience how deep the roots of the burial ground run through the town.

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