For viewers hoping for a mostly faithful adaptation of Stephen King's blisteringly dark 1983 novel of "Pet Sematary," it may be best to stick with Mary Lambert's 1989 treatment. That film, a brutally haunting meditation on death and loss as viewed through the prism of an unearthly family tragedy, carries the same unsettling punch it did thirty years earlier. For this updated version, screenwriter Jeff Buhler (2008's "The Midnight Meat Train") and directors Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer (2014's "Starry Eyes") take a decidedly divergent path beyond the deadfall of the pet cemetery. If the first two-thirds are rather perfunctory, failing to live up to the earlier picture's similar beats while shaving off many of the sharp, messy complexities of its source material, it is the rather brazen and surprising last half-hour which finally, at long last, finds its necessary sting.
See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review
