'Pet Semetary' is strong when it deviates from source material

This may be blasphemy in some corners, but I don't consider the 1989 adaptation of Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary any kind of classic. It has a couple unforgettable moments (the ankle slash, the 'dead is better' line) but it's really more of a fun bad movie than a terrifying genre film.

The new Pet Sematary steps its game up considerably, with a stronger cast -- including a slyly funny Jason Clarke and reliably appealing John Lithgow -- and better production values, I only wish it have deviated more from the book and movie that inspired it.

For the first two thirds of its running time, the film plays like a glossier rehash of the previous iteration -- there are slight nods to expectations and twists that don't really change the story's trajectory but might solicit a few approving 'huh's' from audience -- but it's not risky enough in my estimation to be truly horrifying or groundbreaking in the slightest.

Instead, you get a very competent, audience-pleasing horror film that doesn't have a lot of psychological dimension, which could be a fault of King's book. Sure, the story is broadly about the unwillingness to accept the fact of inevitable death, which is interesting, but this story doesn't exploit the psychology of that conceit like say The Shining does explore the dark side of alcoholism.

The film also suffers from opening so close to the Us phenomenon. That film, which by-and-large eschews cliched scares for headier themes, makes this perfectly fine movie feel perfunctory and far from required viewing.

Still, it has quite a few solid, satisfying jump scares -- and I particularly enjoyed how Clarke leaned into the inherently comic nature of this story in the movie's latter, stronger acts. It's in that last third, where the film springs a few surprises on people familiar with the narrative, that it starts to become a pretty entertaining ride.

And, without spoiling it, the film's ending is daringly bleak in a way that I appreciated.

But, I don't know that this version of Pet Sematary necessarily justifies is existence. The last major King adaptation, It, managed to put a fresh new spin on its core clown baddie Pennywise and benefitted immensely from assembling a very likable coterie of kids that you wanted to root for at its center. But, that too was mostly a commercial exercise and little else.

In these trying times, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but so-called 'elevated' horror projects, like say Hereditary, are simply becoming more my cup of tea.