History YMMV / PetSematary

* AlternateAesopInterpretation: Although the message of the story is probably about acceptance of mortality, a lot of audience takeaway has looked more like "install a fence if you live near a busy road, let alone if you have small children" or "[[FreeRangePets don't have an outdoor cat]]."

* AlternateAesopInterpretation: Although the message of the story is probably about acceptance of mortality, a lot of audience takeaway has looked more like "install a fence if you live near a busy road" or "[[FreeRangePets don't have an outdoor cat]]."

** Zelda was abusive towards her family, but only because she was a little girl in HORRIBLE PAIN and nobody could do anything about it.

* RealismInducedHorror: In a lot of ways, the scariest part of Pet Sematary isn't the titular corpse-reanimating graveyard. It's the scene where three-year-old Gage Creed gets run over by a truck while playing in the street. It's described in gruesome detail, and puts readers in the shoes of a parent watching their child die, unable to do anything about it.

* {{Squick}}: There's more than enough gore in the book and film, but special note has to go [[spoiler:revived Rachel, who's missing an eye and some unknown fluid is pouring out of the socket. And yet Louis KISSES her.]]
* ValuesDissonance: As mentioned above, the Creeds let Church roam around outside on his own, and have had him for years without getting him fixed. Nowadays the attitude towards cats has shifted much more in favor of only letting cats outside with supervision, and it's very difficult to adopt a cat who hasn't been fixed (as most people get cats from shelters, which by and large no longer adopt out intact animals).
* ValuesResonance: Louis' decision to resurrect Gage is an IdiotBall that is being driven by evil psychic forces. However, Louis and Rachel (who thinks Louis' just thinking about ForWantOfANail scenarios) both agree that they would still love their son and take care of him even if he were mentally and physically disabled instead of the CheerfulChild they know though their use of the word "retarded" [[ValuesDissonance hasn't aged as well]]. This sentiment resonates more in the age of debates about disability rights and what the quality of life should mean.

* UncannyValley:
** People and animals brought back by the burying ground usually have this effect on the living. Even for those that aren't in the know, there's something just not ''right'' about them. Louis describes a time when Church jumped into a visitor's lap, and they almost immediately pushed the cat away, somehow sensing that there is something inherently ''wrong'' about the cat. [[spoiler:Jud's story about Timmy Baterman being brought back shows that it's even stronger with other humans.]]
** This was {{exploited|Trope}} by the filmmakers when they cast a man as Zelda, as they knew it would made her even more weird-looking and unsettling.

* WhatAnIdiot: Louis suffers a biggest one yet at the end of the film. [[spoiler: After he finally injects Gage into death, he leaves him in the house, and burns the house down, taking a dead Rachel with him.]]
** '''You'd Expect:''' [[spoiler: Louis to leave Rachel's body somewhere and return to Rachel's family, finally realizing how bringing dead loved ones will always result in disaster. Explaining a believable fake story of what happened and dealing with their grief might be difficult. But at least he still has Ellie and his In-Laws.]]
** '''Instead:''' [[spoiler: Louis decides to bring Rachel to the Indian Burial Ground, telling Pascow it ''will work this time'' simply because Rachel had died recently. Granted, he's grieving over having to kill his son, and then losing Rachel, but still.]]
** '''The Result:''' [[TheHeroDies You can guess what happens next.]] [[spoiler: [[CaptainObvious The resurrected Rachel kills Louis off-screen.]]]]

** Louis, who just won't learn his lesson about letting dead stay dead, but you can't help but pity him anyway.
** Zelda, somewhat, too. She wasn't exactly nice, but she was a little girl in HORRIBLE PAIN and nobody could do anything about it.
** Irwin Goldman, he hates Louis, but his latest anger towards Louis is partially justified due to [[spoiler:his grandson's death at a very young age and some of Irwin's rage towards Louis was probably out of grief too then just spite. Plus, it probably would get worse for him when he hears the news his daughter Rachel is dead before resurrecting as a zombie who kills Louis at the end of the movie.]]

* IdiotPlot: Though the book is well-written and genuinely scary, modern readers often can't understand why Louis and Rachel don't just keep their cat inside, even after Jud warns them that the highway in front of the house has "used up a lot of animals." If Church had been an indoor cat, [[spoiler: he never would have been killed, and Jud would never have taken Louis to the Micmac burial ground. Given what happened to Timmy Baterman, it's unlikely he would have told Louis about it even if it meant Gage remained dead.]] At the same time, there is some ValuesDissonance at work here -- the book takes place in TheEighties, when it was still common for Americans to believe that cats (especially toms like Church) "needed" to be allowed outside to satisfy their hunting instincts. Nowadays, it's considered much more responsible to keep cats inside and provide them with stimulating indoor environments, not only because it keeps them safe, but also because it keeps them from decimating local wildlife populations.
** Furthermore, [[spoiler: the Creeds wouldn't have had to worry about their toddler son running into the middle of a busy highway if they'd just done the common sense thing and put a fence around their property.]]

* HilariousInHindsight: One scene has Rachel [[Film/Titanic1997 nude except for a necklace with a blue gem]].

* HarsherInHindsight:
** In the book, it's mentioned that the driver [[spoiler:of the truck that killed Gage]] [[DrivenToSuicide attempted suicide]] out of guilt. In 2000, the driver who hit and nearly killed Stephen King in the famous 1999 accident also died by suicide.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: The name of the "obedient" cat (also a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot, since it was named for King's daughter Naomi's cat) buried in the outer pet cemetery, who was run down in the road... Smucky.

* ValuesResonance: Louis's decision to resurrect Gage is an IdiotBall that is being driven by evil psychic forces. However, Louis and Rachel (who thinks Louis's just thinking about ForWantOfANail scenarios) both agree that they would still love their son and take care of him even if he were mentally and physically disabled instead of the CheerfulChild they know though their use of the word "retarded" [[ValuesDissonance hasn't aged as well]]. This sentiment resonates more in the age of debates about disability rights and what the quality of life should mean.
* WhatAnIdiot: Louise suffers a biggest one yet at the end of the film. [[spoiler: After he finally injects Gage into death, he leaves him in the house, and burns the house down, taking a dead Rachel with him.]]
** '''You'd Expect:''' [[spoiler: Louise to leave Rachel's body somewhere and return to Rachel's family, finally realizing how bringing dead loved ones will always result in disaster. Explaining a believable fake story of what happened and dealing with their grief might be difficult. But at least he still has Ellie and his In-Laws.]]
** '''Instead:''' [[spoiler: Louise decides to bring Rachel to the Indian Burial Ground, telling Pascow it ''will work this time'' simply because Rachel had died recently. Granted, he's grieving over having to kill his son, and then losing Rachel, but still.]]
** '''The Result:''' [[spoiler: [[TheHeroDies You can guess what happens next.]] [[CaptainObvious The resurrected Rachel kills Louse off-screen.]]]]

** PosthumousCharacter George Anderson. He lost a leg in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and lost all of his money in the stock market. Then, he, Jud, and two friends went to confront Tommy Bateman, who CameBackWrong after being buried in the burial grounds and taunted everyone else with information gleaned from his new psychic powers. Tommy said George's his beloved grandchildren were only nice to their grandfather because they excepted to inherit his money, as he kept his financial woes secret, and that they derisively called him "Old Wooden Leg" behind his back. This (almost certainly true) claim devastated George, and makes him even more pitiable due to how two of his companions had genuine {{Dark Secret}}s about stuff ''they'' did, and the third committed an act of spousal abuse out of anger after learning his wife cheated on him. George was just a kind, well-meaning man who only wanted to do his duty as postmaster but suffered just as badly as the others, though Jud stresses that all of them had some good qualities. [[note]] This is possibly downplayed when the resurrected Gage tells Jud that his wife cheated on him with a man named George, but given the disparity in their ages, that might have been a different George and it's also unclear if Gage is lying.[[/note]]

* TheWoobie: Ellie Creed. [[OffscreenInertia At the end of the story]] she's sedated in the hospital, perhaps driven half-mad from unheeded psychic warnings, her brother is dead, [[spoiler: as is her neighbour, her mother, her cat and in the movie her father (though it's a given that he'll also die soon in the book)]]. And all this at the age of six...[[note]]WordOfGod is that she spent the rest of her childhood in a loving home and is alive and well, though she still has nightmares about the pet sematary.[[/note]]

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The score by Elliot Goldenthal is a nicely atmospheric and at times hauntingly beautiful affair that pays homage to such classic horror scores as ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', ''Film/{{The Amityville Horror|1979}}'', and ''Film/TheExorcist'' while still succeeding on its own terms. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaOh_1lmFGk main theme]] is a SuspiciouslySimilarSong to Music/LaloSchifrin's theme to the aforementioned ''Amityville Horror''.

** '''You'd Expect: [[spoiler: Louise to leave Rachel's body somewhere and return to Rachel's family, finally realizing how bringing dead loved ones will always result in disaster. Explaining a believable fake story of what happened and dealing with their grief might be difficult. But at least he still has Ellie and his In-Laws.]]

** '''The Result:''' [[spoiler: [[TheHeroDies You can guess what happens next.]]]]

** In TheMovie, Zelda was played by a man because they couldn't find an actress bony enough for the part. That certainly wouldn't be a problem today...

* IdiotPlot: Though the book is well-written and genuinely scary, modern readers often struggle with the glaring question of why Louis and Rachel don't just keep their cat inside. Jud even warns them when they move in that the highway in front of the house has "used up a lot of animals." If Church had been an indoor cat, [[spoiler: he never would have died, and Jud would never have taken Louis to the Micmac burial ground. Given what happened to Timmy Baterman, it's unlikely he would have told Louis about it even if it meant Gage remained dead.]] At the same time, there is some ValuesDissonance at work here -- the book takes place in the 80s, when it was still common for Americans to believe that cats (especially toms like Church) "needed" to be allowed outside to satisfy their hunting instincts. Since then, attitudes among vets and pet owners have shifted drastically. Providing housecats with stimulating indoor environments is now considered the more responsible practice, not only because it keeps them safe, but also because it protects endangered wildlife from their clutches.
** Also if anyone had just put up a damn fence Gage would not have run into the road...

** "Oz the Gweat and Tewwible" strikes some readers as creepy and some as mood-breakingly goofy. It's a hallmark of King's style to [[{{Bathos}} juxtapose the grim with the absurd]] (see ''Literature/{{It}}'' for many examples); whether it's clever or Narmy is up to the reader.
** When Louis discovers that Church has been killed, there's a few paragraphs explaining how losing someone or something close to ''you'' is different than seeing the same thing happening to someone else. Okay. Except to explain, he compares this to only finding his wife's "tits" attractive compared to other women, which is both unintentionally hilarious and painfully awkward considering the moment.
-->''A tit wasn't a tit unless it was your wife's tit.''

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Pascow.

%%* EnsembleDarkhorse: Pascow.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: A rare case of ''Author'' Apathy - King was afraid of publishing the novel feeling the thing was too bleak and hopeless. Then it appeared to be a way out of his Doubleday contract, and he submitted it (to his surprise, audiences loved it).

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The hauntingly beautiful [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaOh_1lmFGk main theme]] by Elliot Goldenthal... even if it does sound very similar to Music/LaloSchifrin's work on ''Film/TheAmityvilleHorror1979''.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The hauntingly beautiful [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaOh_1lmFGk main theme]] by Elliot Goldenthal...Although Music/LaloSchifrin fans and film music fans may find [[SuspiciouslySimilarSong it sounds a lot like]] Schifrin's work on ''Film/TheAmityvilleHorror1979''.

* MemeticMutation: "Sometimes, dead is better."

* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: Brutally {{Inverted}} in-universe (as well as out of it): it's repeatedly shown to Louis through every channel possible—from ghostly visitations to personal experience to Jud's detailed catalog of recollections–that resurrecting the dead has CameBackWrong consequences on a scale of misery-inducing to DespairEventHorizon-broaching. He has no real expectation that Gage's case will be any different, even being fully prepared for [[UndeathAlwaysEnds the possibility of having to end Gage's undeath]] in the worst eventuality. The book essentially posits that if such resurrection were possible, there's almost [[ForegoneConclusion no amount of warnings could stop it from happening]].

** More likely the latter, as he's outright stated to be insane.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
** [[Music/TheRamones I don't wanna be buried in a pet sematary...]]
** The hauntingly beautiful [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaOh_1lmFGk main theme]] by Elliot Goldenthal...Although Music/LaloSchifrin fans and film music fans may find [[SuspiciouslySimilarSong it sounds a lot like]] Schifrin's work on ''Film/TheAmityvilleHorror1979''.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Pascow.

* TheWoobie: Ellie Creed. [[OffscreenInertia At the end of the story]] she's sedated in the hospital, perhaps driven half-mad from unheeded psychic warnings, her brother is dead, [[spoiler: as is her neighbour, her mother, her cat and in the movie her father (though it's a given that he'll also die soon in the book)]]. And all this at the age of six...