Pet Sematary (2019)

This adaptation improves upon the wooden 1989 one but just can't overcome the silliness of Stephen King's plot about grown men, one a ER doctor for goodness sake, who - what, unable to face up to a pet cat's death? - trudge through a woods at night to make use of a magical burial ground which one of the men forgets to say only resurrects mangy demon-beasts and when the cat comes back as expected a raging, rabid monster, what do the men do but head back to the burial ground again and again to repeat the process of resurrecting as deranged murderous monsters things even more dear to them.

★★☆☆☆

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Winchester (2018)

The many nods to Hammer Film Productions - the lead named 'Dr Price' who looks like Vincent Price, the florrid red titlecard hanging over a gothic house - feel less like a homage to 70s horror than a pre-emptive plea for viewers not to take the daft Winchester Mystery House caper too seriously, which is wise, because the film is riddled with illogic: sealed rooms with secret entrances, thirteen nailed doors and thirteen hooked passages that fail as ghost repellents anyway; an anti-gun theme that ends up resolved with gunfire; and finally, the baffling suggestion the whole may result from an earthquake?!

★★★☆☆

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