Sequels are tricky. On the one hand, they exist because the property they’re based on has some degree of popularity; people, places, and things that the general audience would like to see more of. On the other, if all any given follow-up ends up being is more of the same, then often times such movies are destined to disappoint the fanbase that they were created to entertain in the first place.
In the horror genre, sequels are also expected to “raise the stakes”. Ratchet up the intensity and altogether outdo its predecessor. Sometimes, given the tone of the original, this can work in the sequel’s favor. Scream 2 (1997) is probably the best example of this, weaving such expectations into its meta-narrative, but not every film offers such an accommodating tone. That is to say, sometimes movies feel concrete and finite — no continuation necessary.
Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (1989) felt, to me, like one such story. A serious, self-contained trauma that utilized both the physical and metaphorical power of the regenerating earth to explore the capacity of grief and its degenerating abilities on the human spirit should it be failed to be managed properly. Dramatic in tone and unique to the characters which occupied it, not to mention the stand-alone novel upon which it was based, I couldn’t imagine a reason why it would need a sequel, which is why I always avoided the one that was made.
What I hadn’t considered was that a sequel is not inherently bound by or to the tone of the original. Just because Pet Sematary was sober and grim, occupying a world that may not seem necessary to revisit, did not mean that its continuation would follow in the same stead. Far from it, Pet Sematary 2 (1992), as it turns out, is anything but severe. Dark and serious, certainly, but also fun.
A testament to what can be accomplished with creative reimagining, Pet Sematary 2 transposes the direness of its forebearer into something more akin to a lively 80s blood-fest. While it deals in dramatic events and relationship issues, it treats its participants with a glaze of self-aware melodrama that lends to the over-the-top, borderline silly escalation of events that its runtime concerns. Instead of rehashing the events of the first, the film weaves the tale into its world as a sort of nightmarish bedtime story that kids tell one another at campfires. It’s a fitting way to acknowledge and celebrate the disparities between the two films as opposed to fighting fruitlessly to diminish them.
Chief among these differences is the inclusion of a character like Gus Gilbert, played by Clancy Brown. Starting out as the sort of brutish bully sheriff one might expect to see in a Stephen King yarn, he transitions to a dazed, grinning, undead ghoul-like variant of his former self in short order. Clancy Brown’s outrageous theatrics provide the proceedings with a dark silliness that further lightens the tone and helps the weightier events digest more smoothly.
Still, it’s the scene where one of the film’s other bully Clyde comes back from the dead to exact his revenge that stands out as a prime example of how this film diverges from its progenitor. Descending from the tonality set forth by Gus’ irreverent actions, it works as an exciting, unnerving, and darkly entertaining example of how Pet Sematary 2 occupies the same path as its originator, while taking a different route to its destination.
Richard Outten’s script is straight forward and direct in its description, blocking the frame and landing the characters with precision and clarity. Mary Lambert carries the words to the screen with acute timing and style, bringing the viewer back to the world where the dead don’t always stay that way in a manner that feels surprisingly fresh considering hers was the eye that realized it the first time around.
A departure from the dire with a dose of the ridiculous, the sequence and the film offer a distinct personality that rarely attempts to ape Pet Sematary. Instead, the film offers another version altogether— less a sequel, more a reimagining— allowing those who engage with it the opportunity to, without forgetting it, put the story of the first aside and have some bloody good fun.
THE SCENE
Geoff opens the attic door and finds Clyde standing there with an axe, his face burned and mutilated. Clyde attacks Geoff with the axe while Renee cackles and then locks the door. Clyde pounces on Geoff. Renee clears her beauty chest and lights the attic on fire. Geoff squeezes his thumb into one of Clyde’s eyes. As the flames spread, Clyde swings the axe and shouts, severing an electrical wire. Finally, Clyde grabs an old ice skate and moves to slice Geoff’s neck. But, before he manages to, Geoff grabs the cut wire and shoves it into Clyde’s mouth, electrocuting him to such a degree that the boy’s head explodes. His corpse stumbles, his neck a bloody stump, and falls lifeless to the wooden floor.
THE SCRIPT
Excerpt found on PAGE 89 beginning with “Geoff smiles.”
THE SCREEN
Geoff smiles. Turning away, he opens he door and…
CLYDE
is standing there, an AXE perched on his shoulder.
The script is written with a matter-of-fact directness that translates well to the screen as the opening image matches these words exactly. Still, the words also come with a sense of personality, occasionally addressing the reader directly, driven less by form and more by feeling. So it is that when Geoff pulls open the door to reveal Clyde’s grotesque form, the result is viscerally jarring.
His face is torn to shit, bones and brain matter exposed. He’s covered from head to toe in dirt and clotted blood. He looks worse than any of the undead we’ve seen. A total waking nightmare.
The description is accurate, as the boy’s decimated face is a mess of naked, pink flesh and shiny blood, a disgusting, monstrous version of the villainous boy who had been dispatched so horrifically earlier in the film. The explicit, candid nature of the description comes alive here, as the camera holds on Clyde for a moment, ensuring the horrific nature of his appearance is not lost on anyone. But rather than capitalizing on the blatant fear factor of such a creature, the boy’s first words are taunting and questionably playful: “Hey, Junior. Wanna play?”
More in line with Child’s Play (1988) than the original Pet Sematary, the dark sense of humor behind the terrifying implications of the risen dead runs fluidly throughout this scene, as it does the whole of the film. There’s an energy behind such a choice, which carries forward in the action immediately following Clyde’s reintroduction.
WHOOSH! Clyde swings the axe, sinking it into the wall just in front of Geoff’s face . . .
Geoff leaps back, avoiding the axe on screen and on the page, clearly coming out of the hazy spell his returned mother had placed upon him. They go back and forth for a moment as Renee laughs in a jumpy frame rate. Her jovial, care-free enjoyment of the attack on her son all but solidifies the more theatrical nature of the film and its bizarre going-ons.
Several swings of an axe later, Chase stumbles forward to save his son. This is realized in a wide shot, putting the family and Clyde on full display, only to climax with Clyde SMASHING Chase in the head with the blunt end of his axe. After, as in the script, the frame reverts to a medium close up of Clyde, his bloody mess of a face once more on full display as his one good, blue eye stares onward. In keeping with the contrastingly breezy sense of humor, he barks sarcastically, “Oops! Looks like Daddy got a boo-boo . . .”
The camera cuts back to Geoff for a moment, making a point to show his anger, not his fear. While the screenplay does provide a beat before Clyde’s next line, the film holds longer as Clyde takes a step closer to the camera in a closeup, the mangled right side of face coming into sharp focus. His acerbic “Now, where were we?” coupled with his damaged visage evokes a Freddy-Krueger-like villain as opposed to the animated loved ones associated with the franchise’s first entry.
The script and screen continue to play out in tandem, the camera cutting between medium and closeups of Clyde and Geoff’s struggle. The film spices up the action a bit, having Clyde throw the axe over his shoulder as opposed to simply swinging it on repeat. Renee, too, performs as written, locking the attic door before she snaps off the knob with a jerk of the wrist. Starting on her hand in a closeup, the camera pans up Renee’s body, holding finally on her staring eyes, watching the wrestling boys with interest but with no discernible emotion.
The film alters the sequential order of events a bit here, focusing on Geoff and Clyde instead of Renee’s actions. In a series of high and low angle closeups, Clyde wrestles atop Geoff, pinning him to the ground. The script calls for Bloody spittle to drip from Clyde’s face. The film takes it a step further, as Clyde regurgitates a stream of thick, mucus-like goop, leaning into the sort of slapstick, gross-out territory more associated with Evil Dead 2 (1987) than Pet Sematary. Then, as scripted, Clyde lunges forward and tears into Geoff’s shoulder, biting at his flesh while Geoff screams.
Here is where Renee sweeps her arms across the vanity and Crystal perfume bottles SHATTER, spilling their contents over the floor. Again, the film cuts away from this, parsing out her actions so as not to distract from the fight between the two boys for very long. The script calls for Geoff to find a mirror shard, saying he JABS it up up and into Clyde’s eye. In the film, Geoff does this with nothing but his thumb, pushing into Clyde’s already damaged eye until milky puss evacuates from the exposed flesh. Once more, broad grotesquery prevails in the stead of muted terror.
Renee reaches for a lighter and flicks it on. She touches the flame to the perfume soaked floor . . .
Fire spreads around the room quickly as the boys continue to roll on the floor. The flames add a visual dynamism that accentuates Clyde’s monstrous features. The scene plays out as scripted, Clyde shouting and swinging his axe once more, hitting the circuit box and severing the insulated cables. The film adds in a small moment where the falling axe almost hits Renee, causing her to leap out of the way fearfully, if only to showcase her vulnerability. Regardless, Clyde once again pins Geoff, this time brandishing an ice skate and says in his final, unscripted line, “You’re gonna die, Junior!”
In both the script and the film, Geoff responds in roughly the same way: “Eat this, asshole!” He grabs an exposed wire and shoves the live cable into Clyde’s mouth, realized in the film in a medium close up of Clyde’s quivering head. He shakes and twitches, sparks powering through his skull as it pulses red and orange as though there was a flickering lightbulb behind his dead skin. Several cuts and angles of Clyde’s electrocution fly across the screen, culminating in a quick close up of his head completely immersed in light, blowing out the image with a loud bang.
SPARKS shoot out of Clyde’s eyes and ears. He jerks back and forth, writhing in a horrific replay of Renee’s electrocution.
Then Clyde’s face BLOWS APART in a gout of ruined flesh and BLUE FLAME. The circuit is blown and the SMOKING BODY falls…
The film focuses a little less on the parallel between Clyde’s and Renee’s demises, rather continuing to emphasize the effects. After the blowout, Clyde’s headless corpse stumbles around the frame for a moment. It falls and lands in a close up of what’s left of the boy’s neck— the bursting flesh resembling a blooming flower of gore and sinew, chunks of charred skin and blood-flecked about on and around the body and floor as the roaring flames quickly close in.
Geoff too is smattered with chunks of Clyde, somewhat dazed but more determined than before. He spots his father and hurries over to him, anxious to ensure he does not lose a second parent to a horrific demise.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“My intention was to really play the dark humor and the crazy energy of teenage boys as the driving force of the action for the film,” Mary Lambert said in her commentary track found on the Scream Factory blu-ray release of the film, “and I don’t think people were expecting the dark humor.”
Sequels can be a knotty endeavor. Are they necessary? Warranted? Disingenuous machinations of a studio hive-mind or worthwhile artistic enterprises? There’s not always an easy path or an easy answer, but what is clear is that sometimes the most successful sequels are those which forge their own route to their own destination. Movies which respect what came before whilst not being beholden to the past.
Pet Sematary 2 offers a distinctly different flavor than that which came before, adjusting the tone and ushering forth a film that felt more at home in the 80s than the one that was actually made there. From the well-drawn script that was pointedly executed, to Mary Lambert’s inventive direction, the film stands as a darkly spirited horror film that offers a great deal worth revisiting. Still, this sentiment is best represented by what occurs in the attic when Clyde returns from the grave to inflict terrifying revenge.
“I wanted to one-up the makeup from the first one, so this one was a full prosthetic with a swollen-shut eye,” effects artist Steve Johnson said in an interview found on the Blu-ray disc. “We even made dentures for the guy, teeth that clipped on him so that one or two teeth were attached to the veneer loosely, so that when he talked and moved it with his tongue, you could see that his tooth was loose.”
“This was really crazy,” Mary Lambert said in her commentary, “because we were in this fairly confined set that was built inside of some sort of an aluminum building and all of this violence was going on… all of these stunts.” She went on to talk about the incredible danger associated with the various propane pipes ejecting real fire into the space, remembering that “every take was a nightmare.”
The scene culminates in a major electrocution and head explosion. For this, Steve Johnson said, “I really wanted something outrageous there.” They constructed a full, pneumatic, animatronic puppet from the waist up. The design, as he recalled, was more jerky, lending itself to the act of being electrocuted. They built strobe lights into it to create the effect of pulsing energy through the body and ultimately created something wholly unique and viscerally effective to showcase Clyde’s sizzling end.
The scene stands in stark contrast to the emotionally heavy climax of the first film. Pet Sematary 2 goes out with a bloody, over-the-top battle incorporating elaborate practical effects, staging, and performances constructed with equal parts humor, disgust, and fear. It, like the film, serves as a great reminder that sequels don’t always have to feel necessary in concept, just so long as they justify their existence in execution.
Like Renee’s shouts that “Dead is better” as she stands amongst the flames, Pet Sematary 2 shows that regardless of whether or not the property in question demands a sequel, reinvention is often good. Healthy. Hell, sometimes, it’s even necessary.
Written by Richard Outten & Directed by Mary Lambert
.){kind=link}