Pet Sematary Two

As I sit here typing this, HBO is running in the background; coincidentally, it's Mary Lambert's original Pet Sematary that's showing tonight, and I'm having a devil of a time paying attention to the business at hand. Most anyone who caught the original -- either during its successful theatrical run or on tape -- would agree that it was an above-average genre film, well-written (by Stephen King, natch) and intelligently directed. This new sequel (and it should be noted that King has gone to great lengths to distance his name from it), unfortunately, packs all the horrific intensity of a dead moth and moves just as fast. Jeff Matthews (Furlong) is the new kid on the block, having moved from Hollywood, where his recently deceased mother worked in “The Industry,” to the small town of Ludlow, Maine. Once there, he becomes enmeshed in the alarmingly regenerative powers of the infamous Pet Sematary, an ancient Indian burial ground that can bring the dead back to life (with ghastly consequences, heh, heh, heh). Things go from bad to worse, as unnecessary corpses begin piling up and Furlong and friends decide that maybe a few reanimated stiffs might be a bit more user-friendly. Like too many other sequels these days, Pet Sematary Two turns out to be short on everything from suspense to acting ability to plot and back again. It's one of those annoying horror films where everyone acts instantaneously upon their most idiotic ideas: an ominous rapping at the door? Throw it wide! Evil rites that must not be performed under penalty of death? Go ahead, nothing'll happen! Creepy sounds in the attic? March right up, it's probably the producers trying to hide! You get the point. Oddly, director Lambert seems to transform, halfway through the film, into Italian horror auteur Dario Argento, flooding her sinking film with garish blues and reds, and cranking up the heavy metal soundtrack every time some poor goon finds himself on the receiving end of a pickaxe. What comes across as genius in Argento's work, however, looks more like arrested artistic development here. There are several out-of-place homages in the film -- Eraserhead, The Road Warrior, and the original Pet Sematary, as well -- that crop up for no apparent reason other than to remind us that, yes, the filmmakers have actually studied film elsewhere (as hard as that may be to believe). It's my guess that someone other than Lambert, who has previously shown that she is indeed quite talented behind an Arriflex, held the creative cards in the making of this film. Like the dead dog that it is, though, Pet Sematary deserves to be buried very, very deep.