What is your story about ‘death’. Is it a tragic one?

The story begins with the Creed family—husband Louis (Jason Clarke), wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz), eight-year-old daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence), two-year-old son Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie) and beloved house cat Church—arriving in the quaint rural town of Ludlow, Maine to move into a charmingly rustic home with plenty of curb appeal. Alas, if one makes the mistake of stepping off said curb, they run the risk of getting pancaked by one of the semi trucks that incessantly roll down the highway just off of their driveway. If that weren’t a jarring enough discovery, consider the fact that the back part of their property houses a local pet cemetery where kids have been interring their furry friends for decades. Before long, Church gets killed by a truck and when Louis despairs of how to break the news to Ellie, next-door-neighbor Jud (John Lithgow) offers to help Louis bury him. After being assured that Ellie really and truly loved him, he takes Louis far beyond the pet cemetery to another area of the woods and has him bury Church there instead.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the particulars of the story, it will probably not come as a surprise to learn that the next day, Church returns, albeit somewhat worse for wear—he smells awful, he is ill-tempered and begins lurking about as if he was a prop in a horror movie. Yes, it turns out that this burial ground has the power to bring the dead back, though, as a now-regretful Jud points out, they are not the same as they once were. It will probably come as even less of a surprise to learn that, following an even greater tragedy, a grieving Louis will choose to take advantage of the burial ground once again in the belief that things will surely work out better this time around. Needless to say, it all goes bad as Louis’ well-meaning attempt to cheat death quickly devolves into a Grand Guignol-style procession of flashing knives, spurting blood, and sliced hamstrings.

This is one of those stories whose ghastly power works best on the page, because it forces the mind to conjure the kind of imagery that most people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to contemplate in real life. Brought to life, both then and now, those unimaginable horrors can’t help but come across as greatly reduced by comparison. The book is an unforgettable work of horror literature, the movie is worthwhile seeing.