Creepshow 2

Creepshow 2: dumb, dumb, not scary. The only segment I was really interested in was The Raft, since it's based on a King story from Skeleton Crew. Though it retained the sense of dread from the book, the kids were so obnoxious that it was hard to feel sympathy when they got eaten by a giant oil slick. Especially the last guy, who touched his girlfriend's boob, then threw her to the monster and swam for his life. In fact, pretty much every character in this movie is completely unlikeable. I feel like these anthology movies never work.

Carrie (2002)

There's only one thing you need to know about the 2002 TV-movie remake of Carrie: IT ENDS WITH CARRIE ALIVE. On her way to Florida, driven by Sue Snell. To start a new life. Had the remake been more successful, it would have been a new life HELPING OTHER PEOPLE WITH TELEKINESIS, documented on a new TV show. I couldn't make this shit up.

Up until that point, it was actually pretty decent. Though the format of showing the events of and leading up to the prom interspersed with police interviews from the days after is actually much closer to the novel, it causes the movie to lose momentum. It also recreates a scene that was in the book, but not in the movie, of a four-year-old Carrie causing rocks to fall from the sky after she sees a teenage neighbor sunbathing topless. Though it adds some backstory, it also adds a lot of bad CGI. The new Sue Snell has an arrogant quality that is totally absent from her portrayal in either the book or the movie. Angela Bettis, also seen as a total misfit in May, was pretty decent as the title character, though she lacked the ethereal quality of Sissy Spacek when she finally gets dressed to go to the prom. Emilie de Ravin is okay as mean-girl Chris Hargensen, although I have no idea why they rewrote the story to make her have second thoughts at the end.

I guess since its a TV movie, this "reimagining of Carrie for a new generation" was interesting enough, but lacked the sheer nastiness and horror of the 70s original. The scenes with the crazy mother (played here by Patricia Clarkson) were way toned-down, though the scene where Chris and her cronies killed the pig is much longer, and much more harrowing. Also, it seems like there is a lot more useless exposition, as if the movie was geared toward teen girls who wouldn't otherwise understand the themes. The prom scene is still fairly shocking, though the moments leading up to the fated drop of the bucket lack the dreamlike feel of the original. Also missing is perhaps the most iconic moment from the original, the hand out of the grave at the end. Though I guess it wouldn't scare anyone now.

But like I said, all you really need to know is that this movie was originally conceived as a pilot for a TV series in which Carrie moves to Florida and helps others with telekinesis. Jesus Christ.

Pet Sematary 2

When I was 11 and an avid Stephen King fan, I was dying to see Pet Sematary 2 in the theater. My parents wouldn't take me, and I clearly remember thinking that I couldn't wait til I grew up and could watch all the horror movies I wanted to. Somehow, I managed to miss out on watching this for the next 15 years. I'm sure I would have liked this movie when it came out, judging from how many times I watched another early 90s Edward Furlong horror vehicle in my preteen years, but on this viewing it came off more as black comedy that anything that could have been possibly conceived as a serious horror movie.

The bare-bones DVD release contains absolutely no special features, save the trailer. The script is atrocious and the acting just as bad, with wooden readings of lines that one would think would be ridden with emotion, like "Gus, what's going on here? Why did you dig up my wife from the grave?"

When Jeff Matthews' actress mom gets electrocuted on set before his very eyes, his veterinarian father moves him across the country to their summer home in Ludlow, Maine, home of the Pet Sematary. The perpetually-smirking preteen Furlong is apparently contracted to only play roles where he is required to wear a cut-off sleeved denim jacket over a flannel shirt. He befriends a chubby kid named Drew, whose sadistic stepfather shoots his dog, leading the boys to bury him in the Pet Sematary. Predictably, the dog comes back in red-eyed, CGI form and rips Gus's throat out.

Inexplicably, instead of being happy that he is rid of his stepfather, blame-free, Drew resurrects Gus so he can come back, climb in bed with Drew's mom (played by whoever played that homewrecker Hallie Lowenthal on My So-Called Life) with a giant hole in his neck, and have creepy zombie-sex with her. So then Jeff decides to bring back his mom, the caretaker of the real cemetary lets Gus dig her up for some reason, and she comes back and tries to kill everyone.

That's really all that happens, save some minor character deaths along the way. The events of the first movie are reduced to a campfire legend in which sole survivor Ellie Creed goes nuts and slaughters her grandparents. The soundtrack is wildly inappropriate and filled with early 90s relics (L7, anyone?) Pretty much everything that happens is completely unbelievable, even for a movie about a haunted Indian burial ground, which actually makes for a pretty entertaining movie. There are also some legitimately disturbing moments, mostly involving animals in peril. At one point, Gus espouses one of my long-held childhood beliefs: that cats are girls and dogs are boys.

It is hard to believe that the filmmakers didn't know how hilarious this movie was, with lines like (after a character has his neck ripped open by Zowie): "I hate that dog."

A remake of the original Pet Sematary with George Clooney as Louis Creed has been rumored for years, even though Clooney is now way too old for the part of a young father. The sequel couldn't match the palpable dread of the original (not to mention the novel's explorations of the madness of grief), and it's doubtful that a modern remake would manage to be as necessarily bleak as the 1989 film.