Nocturnal Animals

Stephen King’s scariest book was doing ‘elevated horror’ back in the ’80s. And now, as King-mania reaches fever pitch, PET SEMATARY is set to be 2019’s most unnerving horror. Total Film goes on set in the dead of night to dig into some extremely grave matters…

- Jamie Graham

Biffer, Biffer, a helluva sniffer. Total Film is standing in a forest clearing an hour’s drive from Montréal, Canada. It’s 2am and the smell of wet pine needles and damp earth gets into your throat and lungs. It tastes like… death. Or maybe that’s the concentric circles of gravestones inscribed with the higgledy-piggledy handwriting of bereaved children, for here, in the clearing signposted Pet Sematary, lay the dear departed pets of generations of local kids.

Marta our pet rabit. Hannah the best dog that ever lived. Smucky the cat, he was obediant. Trixie, kilt on the highway. Biffer, Biffer, a helluva sniffer.

Two silhouetted figures enter the graveyard. One of them clutches a shovel and a green plastic bin bag that knocks heavily against his legs. The men trade whispers in the dark and the one clutching the bag starts off alone, past the tombstones towards a 12ft wall of fallen trees and broken branches. It almost seems like a barrier, designed to block passage. But the man begins to climb. Higher and higher he goes, at last reaching the top and swinging first one leg over and then the other. He slithers out of sight.

Beyond lies the forest. And, as fans of Stephen King’s 1983 bestseller will certainly know – once read, it’s in your bones for life – another burial ground, this one ancient and belonging to the indigenous Micmac tribe. Its stony earth holds the power to return the dead to life, or so the locals murmur. Only sometimes dead is better…

“I held off on reading Pet Sematary because the back of the novel said, ‘The most terrifying book ever written,’” grins director Dennis Widmyer, who first started bingeing on King paperbacks at the age of 11. And when he finally plucked up the courage to crack open its pages, aged 12, “It shook me to the core.”