Pet Sematary (1989)

After tragedy strikes, a grieving father discovers an ancient burial ground behind his home with the power to raise the dead.

King superfan, remember?

To be clear, I think there's room for improvement with cinematic Pet Sematary adaptations.  This movie is pretty damn good, but it can't hold a candle to the novel, arguably one of King's best novels (if not singular best), which is commonly cited as one of the scariest books ever written.  That's a tough assignment, but I hope someone can eventually crack it.

Still, the movie is super creepy.  The child who plays Gage does a hell of a job, the final parts are all sorts of scary, and that highway scene?  Jesus!

And those scenes with Zelda?  Yeah, an entire generation was traumatized.

Nowadays I don't find it as engaging as I did 30 years ago, but it still gets the job done.

Tales from the Darkside (1990)

To stall a witch plotting to eat him, a boy reads her horror tales dealing with a collegian's resurrection of a mummy, a murderous cat, and an artist's pact with a gargoyle.

Another anthology, again featuring the work of George Romero and Stephen King.  They may as well have titled this Creepshow 3.

The cat segment is a particular favorite of mine, an adaptation of one of King's better short stories (which wasn't actually published in a book until decades later, strangely enough).  Cat lovers will not appreciate this vignette 

The mummy segment is also fun, featuring a prime Christian Slater, and early appearances by both Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore.

Then there's the gargoyle segment which is maybe the best of the bunch, adapting the best segment from the old Japanese horror film Kwaidan.  The original makes a lot more logical sense, but the remake is probably the more entertaining watch.

Finally, the wraparound segment involves Deborah Harry trying to serve a child for dinner.

What's not to love?

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

Mourning his dead child, a haunted Vietnam War veteran attempts to uncover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusions, and perceptions of death.

Hey, the second movie in a single batch about losing children.  That's no coincidence, as that subject matter always hits me especially hard.  This one in particular is pretty devastating, with Tim Robbins doing an amazing job in the role of Jacob Singer, whose entire existence and sense of reality unravels over the course of the movie.

Despite watching this movie at least a dozen times, I still don't know what some of the scenes are supposed to be telling us.  I never look it up either, because I want to keep coming back so I can learn a little bit more each time.