Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Louis Creed, his wife Rachel, and his two children Gage and Ellie move from a large city to a small town. Louis works in the university hospital and his wife takes care of the children. They get acclimated to their home and befriend the gruff neighbor Jud Crandall, but something is still bothering them. On their property lies a pet cemetery where local children ritualize their pet's deaths, but the real and very powerful cemetery lies beyond a barrier. When the family cat dies, Jud shows Louis this burial ground, but the cat is simply not the same anymore when it returns. Then tragedy strikes their family and Louis plots to do the same without looking at the grave consequences.

Pet Sematary features an unlikeable protagonist but has some redeeming qualities. Louis Creed is awful and deeply entrenched in toxic masculinity. He's insensitive, quick to anger, and sees his wife as completely irrational and childish. At one point, he literally infantalizes her to the point of seeing her as his own daughter in adult clothes and it's gross. When tragedy strikes, Louis can't deal with his own emotions and sees it as his own responsibility to lead his family through grief. It's almost painful to read. Rachel, on the other hand, is much more sympathetic. She had to care for her disabled sister Zelda and grew to resent her because of her worsening behavior and the trouble it took to care for her. Her parents are the most horrible, abusive people who made her take care of Zelda alone when she was a child on the night Zelda died. Of course that is going to have far reaching effects for Rachel and it isn't weakness or childishness.

** spoilers **

The truly horrific part of the story is Gage's death and return. The grief and sadness of losing the young child is well written. Losing any family member is traumatic, but the loss of a child so young is unimaginable. However, the reveal is completely botched in perhaps an effort to couch the tragedy. Louis talks about it before it happens and completely destroys the shock of Gage getting hit so suddenly by a speeding truck. When Louis digs up his son's body to resurrect, the descriptions of Gage's rotting body are much more extreme than I expected. When Gage returns, he's almost a parody of the boy he was and it's so much more horrific because he was only two years old and could barely speak when alive. The comparison of him living and undead is much more stark and disturbing. The ending is creepy, but again the product of Louis' stupidity. I can't understand why he would make the same mistake a third time.

Pet Sematary has some creepy, disturbing elements that are eclipsed by the awfulness of Louis. He makes the most horrible decisions throughout the book and essentially ruins his family's lives because of his hypocritical inability to accept death. The true horror of the book is in the loss of a small child and its effects on a family, but it's lost in the hamhanded reveal of the death and in Louis' annoying perspective.

My rating: 2.5/5 fishmuffins

Pet Sematary (2019)

Louis Creed, his wife Rachel, and his two children Gage and Ellie move from a large city to a small town. Louis works in the university hospital and his wife takes care of the children. They get acclimated to their home and befriend the gruff neighbor Jud Crandall, but something is still bothering them. On their property lies a pet cemetery where local children ritualize their pet's deaths, but the real and very powerful cemetery lies beyond a barrier. When the family cat dies, Jud shows Louis this burial ground, but the cat is simply not the same anymore when it returns. Then tragedy strikes their family and Louis plots to do the same without looking at the grave consequences.

Pet Sematary is a flawed film that doesn't live up to the book or the original film for me. The family is adorable but their underlying issues aren't really established before anything happens. Rachel and her anxiety and trauma about her sister Zelda are without all the deeper implications of her fear of death and sickness. It's played only for jump scares. One of the best things about the book is the deep friendship between Jud and Louis, but here, it's like they don't even know each other, putting into question why Louis would even follow Jud at all. Even Ellie's relationship with Church seems surface level. When he becomes cruel and weird, she seems happy to be rid of him instead of heartbroken over the loss of her constant companion. Gage's precognition abilities seem to pop out of nowhere and only serve to get Rachel back to their house. The exposition is glossed over probably because it's a familiar story, but those deep relationships need to be established before things happen for it to mean anything.

** spoilers **

The best parts of the film are in the resurrection of Ellie and the ending with big caveats. Ellie's death scene is framed so much like the original with Gage running towards the street. It would have been a perfect twist to have Ellie die instead, but it was literally spoiled in the final trailer. The impact would have been so much more visceral if there was no mention of it at all and frankly ruined the effect of this twist on the story. Louis takes zombie Ellie and cares for her like he would any other child, bathing her, feeding her, and putting her to bed. These mundane tasks take on a tense and unnatural air because she's not the same. Little things remind Louis that she is dead like the brush tangling on the staples in her head. I loved how Gage's death is in your face with graphic descriptions of his decay and I was disappointed with how perfect Ellie looked in comparison. Having Ellie so decayed and disgusting would never be accepted in a film, so this was a good way to portray it. The ending is by far the best part of the film with Ellie making her parents into zombies (in record time) and converging upon a still living Gage locked in the car. The ending is so much more bleak and dark because Gage is like the last bastion of their previous lives.

Pet Sematary is an entertaining movie, but compared to the depth of the book (which I still had numerous problems with) and the original film, it just pales in comparison. The acting was fine, but John Lithgow as Jud felt completely wasted. The vast majority of problems occurred in the writing, especially in glossing over exposition to get to the scary stuff. The ending was unexpected at least. The best twist in the movie was unfortunately ruined in the trailer, so others should take note and not repeat those mistakes. The emotional impact of that scene would have been entirely different if it hadn't been plastered everywhere first. Overall, it was on ok movie, but it really felt short of what could have been.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins

Gantz Omnibuses 2 & 3 by Hiroya Oku

* Gantz Omnibus 2

More people are called to fight against the alien menace with no instructions or rules communicated. Kei and Kato continue to fight and attempt to lead the various people despite their disbelief and/or ineptitude. Kato takes a powerful stance while Kei's ego is inflated by his newfound abilities and equipment.

Gantz is a series with an interesting concept, innovative creature designs, and completely mean spirited, gross execution. Kei continues to be a horrible person that we are apparently supposed to be rooting for. He abuses his powers by taking his suit to fight bullies and terrorize people only to have to fight aliens without it when teleported unexpectedly. He suffers a little, but somehow continues to succeed. For instance, he kicks out female Kei from his house for not sleeping with him only to randomly have sex with a woman who looks exactly like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider later. It's obvious wish/fetish fulfillment on the part of the author and completely took me out of the story. Kei throws himself into fighting and enjoys it because his life is boring and he doesn't excel at anything else. He's just a pathetic, misogynistic character that I hate.

The things I actually like about this story are Kato and the aliens. Kato is Kei's foil in every way. He refuses to kill the aliens, tries to save everyone he can, and is genuinely nice to everyone around him. Despite that one gross moment in the previous installment, he is the kind of person that should be the hero. Perhaps Kei is meant to be a deconstruction of the hero trope, but I don't have to like it. The aliens have such unique designs and abilities with a flock of bird-like creatures and gigantic statues that are actually alive. It's a shame that I hate almost everything else about it. The action is fast paced and the considerable gore impressed me.

Gantz 2 is better than the first because the misogyny is kept to a minimum. The characters are already established and most of the book is action scenes. There are still pin-up pictures of every female character at the start of each chapter which annoys me. I'm only reading up to the third omnibus because I already owned them . Otherwise, I would have stopped at the first.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins


* Gantz Omnibus 3

The team continues to fight the gigantic statue aliens, but the fight doesn't stay away from Kei's personal life anymore.

This installment of Gantz has tons of surprising losses that I never expected. Kei is already an awful person, as I've complained about many times before, but he manages to get so much worse. An alien attacks him at his school and he literally leaves his whole school to die when he's the only one who could even put up a fight. I'm just not sure how the author can expect anyone to keep following this "hero" when he starts horrible and gets progressively worse every single story.

At the very end of the manga (after extra drawings of each female character with even more gigantic breasts than they have in the regular art of the story), the author writes about how people complain about the many gratuitously nude or semi-nude pictures of women throughout his books. He makes it clear that it's for his own enjoyment and further states that it's the same thing as drawing attractive, tall men. It truly isn't. When every woman in the story (except the elderly) are objectified on every cell they're in, it's a lot different than depicting hot guys fully clothed (or censored when nude) and unobjectified. None of the women in the story have any motivations outside romantic entanglements with the male characters. I'm so done with this manga. Gantz has a lot of the same problems as the I Am a Hero series and it's depressing that both series are so popular.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins