What Stephen King calls his most frightening novel makes for a bloody, but muddled film. Directed by Mary Lambert and penned by King, Pet Sematary is written faithfully close to its source material, but stiff acting and off-balance pacing dampen its effectiveness. Packed with 80s camp, including some stellar gore and creepy-kid horror riding off the coat-tails of 1988’s Child’s Play, the film is vintage fun, but is probably viewed through rose-colored glasses. Die-hard King fans may be able to appreciate the sickly silliness, but not if they’re searching for a sincere scare.

Adapted from what Stephen King calls his most terrifying story, 1989’s Pet Sematary is a cult classic embedded in the hearts of many horror fans. Helmed by music video director Mary Lambert, the film’s strengths lie in its all-in cinematography, campy horror, and - under-utilized until the very end - child actors. Nevertheless, my frustrations arise with its weighty script and hopscotch themes, which seem to disrupt the director’s intention despite her admiration of King’s work. Where the novel is a harrowing treatise on grief and the fear of death, its adaptation, however well-intentioned, is…something else.

So the story goes: Dr. Louis Creed (a soulless Dale Midkiff) has uprooted his nuclear family, including wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), and kids Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes) from Chicago to take a job at University of Maine’s health center. They settle into a large house, sandwiched between a children’s pet cemetery and a menacing road stacked with zooming semi-trucks, which soon make a snack of Ellie’s cat Church. Jud Crandall (the inimitable Fred Gwynne), their new neighbor, helps Louis resurrect the dead cat on a Native American burial ground that just so happens to be situated next to the pet cemetery. The film has plenty of moving pieces to position in its 103-minute runtime, and even after excising the novel’s Wendigo folklore, it’s a lot to set up. We are introduced to Creeds on the day of their arrival in Maine following the post-credits scene. Their perfect white-washed house accented by green grass, blue skies, and idyllic weather - a typical “family suspects nothing is wrong with their home” entrance. The blonde Rachel is wearing a navy polka-dot dress, Louis a white t-shirt shirt, their son Gage dawdles n the lawn as Ellie finds a tire swing. It’s overt Americana. Suddenly, a glaringly loud and bright red semi truck tears down the road, immediately grabbing the audience’s attention with its disruptive volume and speed. Gage stands too close to the road, and it’s a few seconds of pure terror. The truck disappears and the serenity of the scene is quickly restored.

Lambert gravitates towards deepening the sense of fear and wonder her characters experience when encountering the uncanny, an effective attempt at unsettling the audience. Repetitive red semi-trucks, perfectly-manicured green grass, and too-blue skies run a stark contrast to scrap metal grave markers, the coldness of the Micmac burial grounds, and fleeting images of death. Lambert derives stylistic choices from the likes of Frank Capra, complete with an initially saccharine story and setting, only to destroy it through the course of the film with equally bright, but oppositional, disturbing imagery - just take a look at Rachel wearing her gingham shorts and a crisp white linen shirt, looking all-American AF when she joins her family in finding the Pet Sematary.