Blow Out

Year of Release:  1981
Director:  Brian De Palma
Screenplay:  Brian De Palma
Starring:  John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

Philadelphia sound technician Jack Terry (Travolta) is hard at work on the post production of a low-budget slasher film.  Visiting a park late at night to record sound effects, Jack witnesses, and records, a car crashing off the road and into a creek.  While he is able to save the passenger, Sally (Allen), the male driver is killed.  It turns out that the driver was a hugely popular presidential candidate.  As he analyses his recording, Jack becomes convinced that it was no accident, but murder.  When Jack tries to convince the authorities of his suspicions, he soon realises that he and Sally are now targets of a very dangerous conspiracy.

This film reunites director Brian De Palma with John Travolta and Nancy Allen who all previously worked together on Carrie (1976).  It's certainly fair to say that, along with Carrie, this is one of De Palma's finest films.  As a director Brian De Palma has a very good eye, but tends to let style get in the way of substance.  He reaches into his bag of tricks here with split-screen, long elaborate tracking shots and slow motion. The story is interesting and involving, with a strain of dark humour, and a startlingly downbeat conclusion.  It features several of De Palma's recurring themes, notably guilt, voyeurism, sexually motivated violence and film references.  However, this has a political dimension that was timely in the early 1980s and is still pertinent today.  The action scenes are skillfully choreographed and the whole thing is genuinely exciting.  John Travolta has seldom been better here, and Nancy Allen, while underused, is affecting.  John Lithgow and Dennis Franz make the most of supporting roles as sleazy creeps, with Lithgow being particularly effective and chilling.
   

John Travolta in Blow Out

Pet Sematary

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyr
Screenplay:  Jeff Buhler, from a story by Matt Greenberg, based on the novel Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Starring:  Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence
Running Time:  101 minutes
Genre:  Horror  

Following the huge success of It (2017) it was almost inevitable that filmmakers would start raiding the extensive Stephen King back catalogue.  The novel Pet Sematary was first published in 1983, and it was previously filmed by Mary Lambert in 1989, from a script written by King.  Stephen King has rated the novel as the scariest thing he has ever written, and it is definitely one of his darkest works.  Given his phenomenal popularity, it's easy to see Stephen King as a comforting, safe spook-meister, something like Rod Serling crossed with the Crypt Keeper, forgetting how dark and genuinely disturbing a lot of his work is.

Pet Sematary follows the misadventures of the Creed family: Louis (Clarke), Rachel (Seimetz), 8 year old Ellie (Laurence) and toddler Gage (Hugo Lavoie and Lucas Lavoie), who move from the big city to rural Maine (natch) with their pet cat, Church.  However, the peace and quiet of the countryside is periodically broken by massive trucks that roar down the road next to their property day and night.  If you think it might be a little unwise to be right next to a very dangerous road with a cat and very young children, then you would be right.  This is proven by the cemetery for pets made by the local children in the woods, marked by the misspelled sign "PET SEMATARY".  When Church meets an unfortunate accident on the road, the Creed's elderly neighbour, Jud Crandall (Lithgow), introduces Louis to another burial ground beyond the Pet Sematary, with the power to resurrect the dead, however they return horribly changed.

This film does make a very big change to the novel and previous film, which is nevertheless quite effective, and while the ending, again changed from the book, doesn't entirely work, the final sequence is chilling.

It's slickly made, the performances are good, and it is a good enough Stephen King, but really it's solid and not much more than that.  There are many worse King adaptations out there, but there are better ones as well.  It is a fun scary movie, with some genuine chilling scenes in it, and it will be a great watch for Halloween, but it is unlikely to cause many sleepless nights 

The cat came back the very next day... Pet Sematary