{"id":46555,"date":"2025-03-03T00:01:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T05:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46555"},"modified":"2025-03-04T02:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T07:00:03","slug":"pet-sematary-1989-women-in-horror-month-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/03\/pet-sematary-1989-women-in-horror-month-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Pet Sematary (1989) [Women in Horror Month 2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When I was a young child, probably too young to be watching a film of this nature, I remember Pet Sematary gracing the family television fairly often. I would watch different portions of it here and there, and it somehow managed to be a sort of undeniable presence in my childhood. Before long, it became a sort of staple in my experiences with film, with quotes aplenty being tossed around between myself and my mom. I lost count of how many times we would exchange a deadpan \u201cYuck. Kiss your own cat,\u201d followed by laughs only an inside joke can bring.<\/div>\n

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So imagine my surprise when I finally sat down and watched the whole thing and found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable film, directed by an absolutely fantastic and talented badass woman, Mary Lambert. Sure, some of the performances range from a little overdone to half baked, particularly on behalf of Dale Midkiff, but the film itself is a testament to a woman’s capabilities behind the camera, especially in a time when women were even less acknowledged for their prowess than they are now. Lambert quickly became an inspiration to me, and was a building block in my own pursuit of filmmaking, telling me without a single spoken word that women are more than able to do great things behind the camera.<\/div>\n
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With nausea inducing gore effects (I mean, who could ever forget the scene with the Achilles tendon?) and a disturbingly unsettling Miko Hughes as Gage, the movie not only haunts your nightmares for years to come, but it’s also a marvel of accomplishment for a made-for-television movie to still be going strong and culturally relevant today. With the ever lovable Fred Gwynne in one of his most memorable performances that didn’t require Frankenstein’s Monster makeup, and a scene so heartbreaking that you can’t help but feel tears welling at the mere mention of an 18 wheeler, it’s sure to forever stick with you, no matter what age you are.<\/div>\n
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Even the rather lackluster remake from 2019 couldn’t touch upon the greatness of the original, and it still stands as one of the best adaptations of Stephen King’s source materials, rivaling Misery and Cujo with it’s usage of creeping dread, unspoken terror, and a feeling of being aboard a vehicle of horror, careening towards disaster at any given moment. Somehow capturing that same essence that makes King’s original work so enduring and captivating, it weaves a story of disconcerting thrills and emotional connectivity that sows a feeling of peril so great, very few films from any decade have managed to exhibit the same level of accomplishment, especially those based on King\u2019s work.<\/div>\n
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While Lambert was shamefully never given an opportunity to truly come into her own as a filmmaker, and I personally feel she would\u2019ve accomplished great things in the prime of her career had she not been the victim of sexism that still runs rampant in the film industry as a whole, she still managed to craft a film that resonated and continues to carry on over 35 years later. She also helped pave the way for strong women to be featured not only in front of the camera, but behind it, in positions of prestigious power and creative direction in the crafting of film. More women deserve these opportunities, even now, and I’m proud to say that Lambert was, and still is, an inspiration to women everywhere. She certainly is to me.<\/div>\n
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When I was a young child, probably too young to be watching a film of this nature, I remember Pet Sematary gracing the family television fairly often. I would watch different portions of it here and there, and it somehow managed to be a sort of undeniable presence in my childhood. Before long, it became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284,2673],"tags":[2478,477,1550],"class_list":["post-46555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivalsevents","category-wihm","tag-1980s","tag-horror","tag-women-in-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46556,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46555\/revisions\/46556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}