By JAKE COYLE

By JAKE COYLE

AP Film Writer

Hollywood, in its infinite irony, has resurrected a tale about the unholy perils of resurrection.

The mean roads and mangy cats of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” are back from the dead in Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s vividly acted, blandly condensed remake of Mary Lambert’s 1989 movie, adapted from King’s 1983 novel. Bringing back “Pet Sematary,” of course, needed no mystical burial grounds. Horror is selling big at the box office, and “It,” the last big-screen remake of King’s work, made a killing.

But the book is a kind of perfect summation of King: equal parts schlock and Poe-grade gothic terror. If the new “Pet Sematary” is solid enough, it’s due in large part to the sturdiness of its source material: a darkly honest New England parable of grief, pulled from King’s own fatherly fears.

Working from a script by Jeff Buhler, the directors make quick work of the first act. Within minutes, the Creed family – father Louis (Jason Clarke), mother Rachel (Amy Seimetz), 8-year-old Ellie (Jete Laurence) and toddler Gage – is driving up to their new colonial home in Ludlow, Maine, and Ellie is ambling into the nearby pet cemetery. Its name is accidentally misspelled by the kids who solemnly parade their dead dogs and cats there, most of them victims of the Orinco oil tankers that whoosh menacingly through the woodsy town.

When the family’s pet cat, Winston “Church” Churchill, is found dead roadside, Louis and Rachel debate whether to tell Ellie, who will surely be crushed.

Rachel, coaxed by a belief in heaven, and Louis, a rational doctor, differ on the afterlife. But they ultimately agree to tell Ellie that Church just ran away.

When the Creeds’ friendly neighbor Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) that evening helps Louis to the cemetery for Church’s burial, he leads Louis deeper into the woods to an ancient burial place. Louis goes along with it. The next day, to Louis’ surprise, Church is back – Ellie’s confrontation with death avoided – but the now far-crankier feline has unsurprisingly picked up a slightly different demeanor on account of having been raised from the dead.

It’s not plot deviations from King’s novel that hamper “Pet Sematary.” It’s that, from early on, Kolsch and Widmyer, rely less on the detailed accumulation of atmosphere that King built his tale on, than jump cuts and music cues to build suspense. It puts “Pet Sematary” on a more familiar genre track.

King had something more disturbing in mind. The author, who penned the script for the original film, insisted then that the movie be shot in Maine, the thick-wooded wellspring of King’s nightmares. This “Pet Sematary” was made in Montreal. Though a seemingly minor difference, it really amounts to a heart transplant. By the film’s final scenes, “Pet Sematary” has been reduced, subtly but substantially, into a more standard-issue zombie movie.

Still, I wouldn’t want to level the tale’s most lingering line – “Sometimes dead is better” – on this “Pet Sematary.”