Love it or hate it, Pet Sematary (1989) remains one of the most controversial entries in the Stephen King cinematic oeuvre. Today we are diving into this controversial examination of grief and looking at all the ways in which the movie transgresses against cultural taboos. Does the movie’s most shocking moments still hold up?
The entire Horror Homeroom crew is here and we’re talking Jud’s questionable nature, what Zelda brings to the story, whether we should be watching the movie as folk horror and so much more!
Suggested Reading:
- Brown, Simon. Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2018), 96-100.
- Corstorphine, Kevin. “‘Sour Ground’: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the Politics of Territory.” The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 1 (2006): 84-98.
- Mackenthun, Gesa. “Haunted Real Estate: The Occlusion of Colonial Dispossession and Signatures of Cultural Survival in US Horror Fiction.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 43, no. 1 (1998): 93-108.
- Nash, Jesse W. “Postmodern Gothic: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.” Journal of Popular Culture 30, no. 4 (1997): 151-60.
- Pet Sematary. DVD. Directed by Mary Lambert. Bucksport, ME: Paramount Pictures, 1989.
- Unearthed and Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary. DVD. Directed by John Campopiano & Justin White. Bangor, ME: Ocean’s Light Productions, 2017.
- Weinstock, Jeffrey A. “Maybe It Shouldn’t Be a Party: Kids, Keds, and Death in Stephen King’s Stand By Me and Pet Sematary.” In The Films of Stephen King: From Carrie to Secret Window, edited by Tony Magistrale (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 39-49.
Related: check out posts on grief in horror film generally and on grief in Hereditary and grief in folk horror, specifically Wake Wood and The Other Side of the Door.
You can check out the fantastic documentary on the making of Pet Sematary here; it is absolutely worth a watch:
You can find Simon Brown’s book here:
And Stephen King’s Pet Sematary here:
And, finally, the 1989 film version of Pet Sematary here:
Check out Gwen’s posts on death in Pet Sematary and on Zelda and family repression.
You can also check out our Horror Homeroom Conversation on 1974’s Black Christmas here.
