There might be at least one or two Stephen King stories that should be left alone as they were, but obviously some folks don’t agree. Mike Sprague from MovieWeb is one of those and while he does propose a great idea as to how things could be done differently, it still feels like a non-starter. Before really getting going let’s make one thing clear, it was easy to be scared of St. Bernard’s after reading Cujo, since they’re not only massive dogs, but there’s no telling just what they could do if they lost their temper. While a lot of people would tell you that such dogs are exceedingly gentle, and they’d likely be right, just the sheer size of them is enough to make a lot of people nervous. But the dog in this movie was written to resemble something like demon shaped like a dog that had crawled out of the nearest hellhole and had only one intention on its mind, to tear apart anyone that seemed to represent an annoyance or a threat.
Just for those that are either too young or don’t remember the whole story, Cujo wasn’t always an unholy nightmare, and thankfully he didn’t do for St. Bernard’s what Jaws did for sharks. Cujo was the worst-case example of what happens when a dog contracts rabies from a bite and then turns on those around him. He went off chasing a rabbit down a hole, his barking woke up a group of bats, and in the ensuing frenzy he was scratched or bitten and contracted the disease as a result. Up until then he was a friendly and loyal companion, but when you have that big of a dog turn on you with lethal intent it can make a lot of people look at the breed and begin to wonder. Worse yet, he killed a few people and trapped a mother and her son in their car during one of the hottest days on record, without AC, and terrorized them to no end until the mother finally had enough and went outside to deal with him. If not for the moments in the book that focused on the father figure this novel would have been a great deal shorter and it also would have been a lot scarier since there was no end to Cujo’s constant threat until his final breath.
But bringing it back not only seems like a poor idea, it’s also something that wouldn’t seem quite as practical. You can imagine that the special effects needed would be provided quite easily, but the fear that CGI would be used extensively is something that can’t be discounted. People have gotten tired of CGI being used as the go-to for so many directors, even when it’s successful and comes off without much of a hitch. In this case it seems fair to state that a well-trained dog could be used for a lot of shots, but it’s also fair to say that CGI would become a big factor and that might ruin a good portion of the story and the utter terror that it invoked in a lot of people. Cujo being transferred to CGI seems to be an idea that carries a lot of merit if one happens to have that much faith in the graphics, but it also seems like something that might backfire if so much as a hair is out of place. If you don’t think fans are that discerning then it’s likely you haven’t been paying attention throughout the last couple of years as CGI has become the dividing line between many people.
Plus, in one opinion it seems as though Cujo shouldn’t have been made in the first place. The original movie was a great attempt at bringing the next-level horror to the people who had read the book and knew what to expect, but it fell way short of what was intended. One could point to just about any quality of the story that contributed to this but overall the disjointed feel of the story as it dealt with the mother cheating, the father finally coming to realize this, and the mother and her son being terrorized within the car didn’t really mesh all that well. In a way it was almost as though King was telling two different stories in the same book and they simply didn’t coexist on a copacetic basis. It’s hard to say this while still being a big fan of Stephen King, but there simply wasn’t enough continuity within the story at times and while it did finally come to a head things just didn’t feel the same in the movie as they did in the book. On top of that, the kid ended up dying in the book while he managed to live in the movie. It might seem harsh at times, but sticking to the source material is important now and then.
Follow Us
