As a kid growing up I was always surrounded by movies and I was greatly influenced by my Dad with the 80s Pop Culture Movie Boom with films like: “Star Wars”, “Indiana Jones”, “Jurassic Park”, “Ghostbusters”, “Aliens” and the list goes on and on, which is probably why I’ve always had an affinity with these types of films.
During my formative years it was reading which kept me preoccupied. An anecdote my mom loved telling (again and again) was how instead of toys I asked “Santa” for books and for that Christmas (I was either nine of ten years old at the time) I received “Little Women” and “Daddy Long Legs” and I guess you can say that the rest was history.
As an adult I’ve tried to make it a point to either read a book on which a movie was being based on before seeing the film or after, depending on my schedule and yes there are going to be comparisons to one body of work to another but I have just recently come to realise, after doing this for over 11 years (I’m basing it on when I started working) that reading a book and watching a movie (or series) are both different experiences on their own and when they are based on the same material, it’s either one will be better than the other or you can take them as separate entities.
Case in point, the Harry Potter books and films, now this the kind where you separate one experience from the other. Fans will most probably have read the book and have seen the movies, while others may have just seen the films. You can easily do comparisons for both but there are just some feelings which come from reading a book and other emotions from seeing it on the big screen. They are both, never truly the same.
Now when it comes to the “Fantastic Beasts” films, well, I honestly don’t know what JK Rowling is up to but it’s either she quits while she’s ahead (or does more damage) or she fixes things-and fast.
There are films which are actually better than the books, well all of these are just the opinions of a bookworm and a movie buff, take everything with a grain of salt. For me, “Crazy Rich Asians” was a better film that it was a book. Like I’ve said, I could not stand the too flowery descriptions of mind boggling wealth in the books. I could not stand reading about tulips being flown in from Holland for a wedding in Hong Kong (or something to that extent) when I think about the unequal distribution of wealth in our country. It just didn’t sit well with me, reading all those details but seeing them on screen was better.
Likewise not all movie adaptations, or in this case, series adaptations are better than their literary source material. Case in point, Stephen King’s “Under the Dome” was a good read for me (and it’s a big ass book) but the series on which it was based was a literal mess. Maybe it would have been better as a movie but there, I enjoyed reading the book more.
Now, speaking of Stephen King (yes, it was a long introduction) let’s go to one of his more recognized works, “Pet Sematary” I tried reading the book before seeing the film (my sister lent me her second hand paperback copy) but I’ve just been so busy with work, life, Luke (my almost two year old son) and of course, writing film and series reviews on the side. I was literally just a few pages from finishing the book before I saw the 2019 adaptation. Which is funny, since King is known for his snowballing quick pace of events in the final pages of his books.
Here is my verdict – this is one of those you take the book and the film as separate entities. They are both different experiences which had me ugly crying (literally, I was wailing in the office pantry, while reading the book) and screaming in terrified horror while seeing the film.
Given the very drastic changes that the 2019 film did I suggest you avoid the second and third trailers for major spoilers. Still, like I said they are both different and I had a different set of emotions while reading the book and seeing the film.
For one, I appreciated how the book has this profound discussion on death. I lost my Dad at the age of ten, yes my Dad whom I mentioned at the first part of this write up. So I am no stranger to Death, how indeed, it comes to you like a thief in the night to steal what you always thought would be yours, or someone you thought would always be there.
The smell of flowers in an airconditioned room during wakes is something all too familiar to me. The feeling of kissing my Father’s cold cheeks before they finally shut the coffin is a feeling I will never forget.
The book also deals a lot with death and children, and you would think that death and children should never be in the same sentence, let alone dance so dangerously close to each other. Yet King masterfully weaves this in the book, how children first encounter the concept of death.
Usually through the loss of a beloved death and how they understand and deal with death and the afterlife are common themes in the book and is something that I admired while reading, not so many authors would tackle the very thought of death with such tenacity as what King did in “Pet Sematary”.
Unfortunately this profound discussion on death does not really translate into the film, which is alright since I understand that they probably had to give way to more jump scares, suspense and slasher thrills.
While reading the book, one of the things that scared me was the story of Rachel and her sister Zelda, and I guess this bit of the book discusses and expounds on the guilt and trauma that we built over the death of a loved one. Well, the movie just made this bit of the book even more terrifying and added more to the material, you know just to terrorize its audience and well, it works, especially if you came in to see the film, to get scared.
His very protagonist Louis Creed is a Doctor, who spent years of his life training to save lives, he also spent many summers helping his Uncle, a mortician. It is all these splendid little details which make Louis capable of what he eventually brought himself to do. It is interesting to think that as a Doctor he straddles through life and death and again, this just makes him perfect for the story.
Like I said earlier, I was not able to finish the book when I saw the film and I was totally blown away by the ending, I was not expecting that at all. Now, when I got home, or rather the morning after seeing the film, I actually got to finish the book and I finally understood why the ending of the film was written as such, granted that they are both still very different from each other.
“Pet Sematary” is one of those stories that is not simply a horror story but something that has so much themes and depth and which is probably why it has such a long standing foot hold in Pop Culture. This is definitely one of those, if you can read the book and see the film you should kind of thing.
“Pet Sematary” is now showing in cinemas and is Rated R-16 with no cuts.