Horror has recently become one of the most popular genres you can see both in the big screen and on your television (or mobile devices, it doesn’t matter). I personally started to get more into it during the first year that the pandemic struck, it’s not that I’m new in the genre, it’s just that I’m new in getting comfortable getting scared…and trust me, what your imagination shows tends to be way scarier than what you see on-screen.
Since I just admitted that I started getting more into the horror genre, some of you may wonder…
Why would you read a horror novel?
Well, there’s a very simple answer, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. Reading is part of exploring new worlds and getting to discover the fantastical world (even if it’s a nonfiction story) that the narrator/author is showing us. It’s been years since I’ve had a copy of It seating in my bookshelf waiting for me to read it, and when I was finishing middle school/starting high school, I was terrified of Pennywise the clown.
It’s because of this character that I didn’t want to open this book, so I just got more and more into my comfort zone, reading fantasy novels, nonfiction, …you get the point. Anyway, coming back to present day, a close friend of mine is a huge Stephen King fan and, since he also enjoyed watching The Shining, he recommended the film…after I read the book. So I did that.
I bought my copy of The Shining and started getting more and more immersed in the world built by Stephen King. This wasn’t the first book I read that he had written, but it did become the first one that wholly captured my attention. After I finished it, I decided to watch the film and, although I have a couple of criticisms towards it, it was enjoyable. So I decided to read another book that had been adapted to film more than once, Pet Sematary.
Now, after opening up and showing you my backstory in horror, and those who know me know that I didn’t enjoy watching horror films until recently, I decided to read the book whose adaptation made people shiver, and I get it.
I haven’t seen the movie, so I took it as an advantage of sorts and decided to immerse myself in the original experience. Taking my imagination to the cemetery inhabited by the pets in the fictional city of Ludlow, Maine. Knowing the characters, imagining them, and honestly, I wasn’t disappointed at all.
The story about a foreign (foreign because they come from another city within the U.S.) family moving to a completely new place, in which everything goes fine until tragedy strikes, is very empathetic.
This “review”, and I’m using quotation marks because it’s not meant to be a review, shows the true horrors of suffering a tragedy, specially from a close one. If you haven’t suffered any of this, then that’s great, but I don’t envy you. Life and death are part of our daily lives, we just aren’t used to talking about death.
Suffering is part of our mourning processes, but what Pet Sematary does is ask a question I wouldn’t have expected to think about…
What would you sacrifice to bring back a loved one who has passed away?
The single thought of that question makes me think about it, and my answer may not please you, but it’s because we’re different. Maybe we’ll reach the same conclusion, or maybe we’ll disagree on the matter, but I wouldn’t bring back a loved one who’s passed away.
Like I said before, death is part of our daily lives, we just don’t think about it often.
Onto the less gloomy part of this text, is it for you? Well, it depends.
Pet Sematary isn’t a complete horror novel as other ones in the same spectrum, It is scarier because it plays with the imagination we all used to have as kids (as well as our own horrors), but it does toy around your mind with what could happen if we were to break our natural cycle.
As I’m writing this, my dog is fast asleep on the couch next to my desk and I look at him hoping his days aren’t counted, but I know I would be lying to myself. Pet Sematary isn’t a book about a man who creates a monster just to see a missing loved one once more, it’s about a man whose mind starts to break because he has the opportunity to bring back a loved one from the dead, he just doesn’t know about the consequences, at first.