Every Version of Pet Sematary

King himself called Pet Sematary the scariest thing he ever wrote, and he was right. The 1989 film is faithful and has genuine dread, but the novel earns its horror across 400 pages of mundane, loving family life before it destroys everything. The slow accumulation of Louis Creed's obsession, the way the Micmac ground works on his rationalist mind, the unbearable chapter where his wife Rachel arrives home: none of that survives compression. The book is the version.

Mary Lambert's 1989 adaptation has been condescended to for years as cheap King product, but it holds up. Dale Midkiff is limited, but Fred Gwynne's Jud Crandall is a genuine piece of American gothic acting, warm and sad and culpable all at once. The film's biggest advantage is that Miko Hughes, who played Gage, was genuinely terrifying in ways that are difficult to explain rationally. The low budget gives it a flat, overlit look that, by accident, makes the horror feel domestic and close. It belongs in the conversation.

Directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer changed the ending of the source material, a decision that provoked immediate backlash from King fans. They were right to do it. Adapting a novel closely, a second time, 30 years later, makes no artistic sense. The 2019 film is not as scary as the 1989 version, and it irons out some of the rough texture that made Lambert's film work. But it has ideas about the material rather than just following it, which puts it above the prequel without question.

Lindsey Anderson Beer's Pet Sematary: Bloodlines had a defensible premise: show the origin of Jud Crandall's knowledge of the burial ground, set in 1969. What arrived on Paramount+ was an underlit, underwritten 84 minutes that explains exactly the things that should have stayed unexplained. Horror loses most of its power when you file down the mystery and put it in a cabinet. The 2019 remake, whatever its faults, at least committed to changing the story. Bloodlines cannot commit to anything.