Pet Sematary

Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" is his biggest selling novel — and that's no small feat when you consider how phenomenal his book sales are in general.

And I remember King saying in an interview when the book was published that he didn't think this particular story would make a workable movie. Now that it has become a movie, we have evidence that King should have stayed with his initial instinct.

What is wrong with "Pet Sematary" — the movie — mainly has to do with some things being more acceptable in the reading than in the watching. Movies are such a visual, literal medium that lapses in logic that may not be as obvious on the printed page leap out at the audience when transferred to the big screen. Some such lapses here are so obvious that the protagonists appear to be real nincompoops, despite their college-educated yuppie demeanor.

And then there's the "Chucky" problem.

But before getting into that, let's warn you that in the course of this review, in order to discuss the film's more serious problems, I am going to be giving away some key plot elements. So if you are planning to see the film and happen to be in the nation's minority — those who have not read "Pet Sematary" — you might want to stop right here.

"Pet Sematary" is about a Chicago family — a physician, his wife, their young daughter and toddler son — who move to rural Maine, where Dad will be teaching in a nearby university.

The house they buy is on a truck route where huge 18-wheelers go barreling down the road in front of their home at all hours. Behind the house a path leads to an ominous pet cemetery, and beyond that is a hidden Indian burial ground.

The minute they arrive at their new home, which Mom and the kids have apparently never seen, the young boy toddles into the street and is barely rescued from becoming road-killed by the kindly old neighbor from across the way.

The first noticeable lapses in logic arrive immediately: Why is it such a surprise that this is a hazardous truck route? Why didn't they know about the pet cemetery, if not the Indian burial ground? Why don't they put up a fence to protect their young children from the road? If they aren't going to put up a fence, why do they keep turning their backs on the kids and letting them run into the road?

A short time later the kindly old neighbor takes them to the ominous pet cemetery, and later still he tells the doctor a couple of horrifying stories about how the Indian burial ground can resurrect the dead.