Movie Info
Movie Name: Pet Sematary 2
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): August 28, 1992
MPAA Rating: R
I’ll give the movie this…that is pretty horrifying!
Jeff Matthews (Edward Furlong) has just lost his movie star mother Renee (Darlanne Fluegel) in a tragic on-set accident. Moving with his father Chase (Anthony Edwards) to his parents’ home town of Ludlow, Maine, Jeff finds himself at a new school with no friends. Jeff befriends Drew (Jason Mcguire) and makes an enemy of bully Clyde Parker (Jared Rushton). When Drew’s sheriff father Gus Gilbert (Clancy Brown) kills Drew’s dog Zowie, Jeff learns the story of the Creeds and the Native American burial ground behind the pet cemetery…and a dangerous cycle is about to begin again.
It’s all fun and games when your friend’s dad is the undead…
Directed by Mary Lambert, Pet Sematary 2 is the follow-up to the adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary from 1989. Stephen King had no association with this film, and the film was generally panned by critics.
I was kind of up in the air about Pet Sematary. The book was pretty good, and the movie had its moments…but it also had some really bad parts. When I learned about Pet Sematary 2 being made (with no involvement from Stephen King) I was pretty leery…and rightly so.
Who’s a good boy?
Pet Sematary 2 follows the original film years later. Here, the legend of the Creed family is a ghost story that kids tell, but no one seems to get that the legend is a cautionary tale to stay away from the Indian burial grounds. The story unfolds as you can expect with Jeff making bad decisions after witnessing the death of his mother and you find another resurrected animal (fortunately a more formidable husky…better than a little cat). You have the jerky, abusive father and the bully…pretty much everyone you know will die (and/or be resurrected). Despite the fact that the burial ground keeps spitting out evil, everyone buries stuff there.
The first Pet Sematary was no acting classic. The little boy was good and Fred Gwynne made it watchable, but here everyone struggles. Furlong fresh off of T2 is just as annoying as he was in that film. Clancy Brown tries to insert a bit of humor and I really didn’t need to see an Anthony Edwards sex scene. Former child star Jared Rushton (from Big) plays a good bully, but as mentioned everyone’s role is pretty predictable.
Now my make-up is running
Visually, the dog Zowie is a much more intimidating zombie than Church was in the original film. Add to that more zombies, you have a bit more visual movie than the original, but the movie also lost some of the scenery and the creep factor of the first film. Here, the horror is really generic and based less on building terror.
Pet Sematary 2 really isn’t worth watching. The movie is dull, not scary, and a poor follow-up to a movie that struggled in the first place. It seems to me that if everyone in town knows about this Indian burial ground, it isn’t much of a secret and maybe, they should just dig it up or something to prevent someone from burying something in it every few years.
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