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Director
Mary Lambert
Year
1989
Country
USA
Runtime
103 min

Also released as

  • Stephen King's Pet Sematary
  • Stephen King's - Friedhof der Kuscheltiere
  • Cementerio de Animales
  • 宠物公墓
  • 夜半仔敲门
  • ペット・セメタリー
  • Hřbitov zvířátek
  • Heyvan Məzarlığı

Filed under

Pet Sematary

King wrote the novel and thought it too bleak to publish. The film keeps the bleakness.

A family moves to rural Maine, near a road where trucks kill things, and a burial ground beyond the pet cemetery that gives back what you put in it, changed.

Mary Lambert directed from King's own screenplay and the film is unusually faithful to the thing that makes the book unbearable: it is about a parent who cannot accept a child's death and does the unforgivable thing, and the film does not flinch from where that goes.

Fred Gwynne is the standout as the neighbour who knows better and helps anyway, and the reason he helps is the saddest idea in it.

The Zelda flashbacks, of a sister dying of spinal meningitis, are more frightening than any of the resurrections.

It made a great deal of money and King has said it is the one that scared him to write.

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Trailer

The sleeves

The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.

poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
DE · poster
ES · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster

Where to watch

Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.

Checked 9 Aug 2026

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