What James Knows

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s plenty in this world that I don’t understand. These things include but are not limited to: Why girls fart, Why I can’t seem to grow a beard, and Why movies based on great books by Stephen King tend to suck hard. Somehow though, despite my previous strike-outs (I’m looking at you, The Stand), I still had some hope left in me. Then I got hit by a double whammy. I checked out 1408 and then Pet Sematary. I read the story that the former was based on a couple years ago, but I just read Pet Sematary this week so it was very fresh in my mind. Both movies fell flat in my opinion. I just don’t get this. Here you have some fantastic content in the form of King’s books and yet the movies based on these books, often times with screenplays written by King himself, end up coming out like disjointed piles of crap.

I don’t really know what happened with 1408. I remember seeing the trailer awhile ago and thinking “Wow, that looks awesome.” Then I read the story and still wanted to check out the movie. I had heard that the theatrical cut wasn’t great but that the director’s cut was better so I went straight to that one…and was promptly disappointed. What looked to be a great psychological thriller that should scare the crap out of me ended up being an hour and a half of John Cusack throwing a fit in a hotel room. Even the awesomeness of Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t save this one. I can’t comment much on the comparison from the book to the movie because I can’t remember much about the story. Let’s move on though.

As I mentioned, I just finished up Pet Sematary. It was a good read and it wasn’t too long at about 400 pages. I thought the story was scary but it felt more creepy than outright terrifying. Told mainly from the point of view of Louis Creed, the book shows how a sensible, logical man slowly loses his mind and everything that he holds dear in life. That being said, I was looking forward to at least checking out the movie.

The best I can say about the movie is “Ugh” and this is one of the ones that King wrote the screenplay for. I honestly don’t understand how he could write the book and then write the screenplay and think that it would make a good movie. I totally get the fact that some things need to be changed when changes a book into a movie however the things that were changed here make no sense and actually hurt the overall story. These range from minor to major things, but ultimately the changes make things confusing and change the story from a cohesive tale of terror and a man’s spiral into insanity to a group of scenes that might belong to the same story.

My biggest beef with Pet Sematary was the fusion of Missy Dandridge and Norma Crandall. In the book, Missy was a very minor character. She watched the Creed children a few times and did the laundry. Meanwhile, Norma was the arthritis-suffering wife of Jud Crandall, the friendly old neighbor that tells Louis about the Pet Sematary. She’s a somewhat minor character too, but you feel a far greater connection to her, plus her life (and death) serves to further cement the relationship between Louis and Jud. What we got in the movie however was pretty confusing. Missy is in the film. Norma is not. Missy does the laundry, but complains of stomach pains and avoids any medical assistance that Louis offers (Norma doesn’t turn down Louis’ offer in the book). Then something odd happens. Missy kills herself. Her death feels forced and completely unnecessary. In the book, Norma’s death serves as a precursor for far worse things that were still to come for the Creed family. It also works to begin to expose Louis’ young daughter Ellie to the concept of death. Missy’s film death provides none of these things. She could have been written entirely out of the movie along with Norma and they could have saved about 10 minutes which could have been used for furthering the story or helping to have things actually make sense.

I think that overall Pet Semetary is a bad film. I can’t speak for how it looks if you haven’t read the book before seeing the film, but I thought that the movie was confusing at times because I did read the story. I know that good films based on Stephen King’s books exist. See The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption, Carrie, and although it’s less faithful to the book, The Shining. Meanwhile, the clunkers seem to outnumber the good films by at least 2 to 1. How does this happen, especially with King’s own involvement? Maybe the guy is just not cut out for film. Yes, he can write a good book, but that’s different than a screenplay. Yes, some things need to be changed in order to fit the medium, but when you lose all coherence and spookiness that made the book good then what’s the point?

Tags: Book, DVD, Pet Sematary, Stephen King