Stephen Kings Novels Recreated into Films - Movie Review Example

The story of Dr Louis Creed (Midkiff) and his efforts to revive his three-year-old son (Hughes), killed by one of the giant trucks that thunder past their new Maine home, is more like a sketchy outline than a finished work. No film about a scalpel-wielding three-year-old psycho zombie could be entirely devoid of shocks. But reams of tedious exposition, about a children's pet 'sematary' and the magical resurrecting properties of an Indian burial ground, stretch patience and credulity to their limits, while Lambert fails to exploit the potential of the novel's best set pieces.

The stories told in flashback by Creed's wife (Crosby) and their elderly neighbour (Gwynne) also seem hopelessly contrived, arresting the book's page-turning plot without adding emotional or psychological depth. If Pet Sematary was just a movie, then it might seem somehow acceptable: its plot, sort of a modern day zombie flick, is fairly creepy, and its premise is sufficiently horrific. Pet Sematary is not, however, a stand-alone film. It is, after all, a translation of a novel, and a great novel, at that.

Though plotwise, the film stays fairly true to Stephen King's novel, it remains flat and unconvincing throughout. Unfortunately, this is a fate that has befallen most of King's work. Stephen King's novels don't, as a rule, translate well onto the silver screen. In much the same way that Church, having come back from the dead, seems to be missing something vital, so do King's books when they transition to movies. Perhaps this is because so much of the action in Stephen King's novels, so much of what is horrifying in them, happens to the characters internally.

It is their thoughts, their fears, their histories and hopes, that make King's novels so successful. Films often have difficulty conveying this, and this is especially true of the horror genre. Pet Sematary is no exception to this rule. The novel that Pet Sematary is based on is probably one of the best, most terrifying horror novels ever written, and that only makes the movie even more disappointing. In his novel, Stephen King reveals the horror layer by layer, peeling away the sense of normality and safety little by little, until all that is left is sheer terror.

DreamcatcherStarring: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Director: Lawrence Kasdan, Release Date: March 2003, Genres: Horror, Suspense.The movie opens with four troubled guys in their late twenties, Dr. Henry Devlin (Thomas Jane), Joe 'Beaver' Clarendon (Jason Lee), Gary 'Jonesy' Jones (Damian Lewis) and Pete Moore (Timothy Olyphant), dealing with their gift. These lifelong buddies were given the ability to read minds and more by a mentally challenged guy named Douglas 'Duddits' Cavell (Donnie Wahlberg) when they were young.

Now they use their magic to do such mundane things as finding the lost car keys of a real estate agent that one of them wants to date. But their talents will soon be put to the test.Meanwhile back in the snow-covered woods where the guys are going for their annual outing, trouble is brewing. The mad Colonel Abraham Kurtz (Morgan Freeman), ably assisted by