LOS ANGELES — “Sometimes dead is better.”

The most memorable line in Stephen King’s 1983 novel “Pet Sematary” is a warning offered far too late. Tragedy has already befallen Louis Creed and his family, who live near an especially permeable boundary between the living and the dead — not just the dangerous road running alongside their house, where enormous trucks race past at terrifying speeds but also the ancient Mi’kmaq burial ground in their backyard. If things look grim now, a neighbor reminds Louis, they can always get worse, and it might be best for him to leave bad enough alone.

The new “Pet Sematary” movie proudly refutes this common sense, even as it follows a familiar chain of Hollywood logic. Thirty years have passed since Mary Lambert’s 1989 hit movie adaptation, during which there have been countless film and television adaptations of King’s work; several of them (including “It” and “The Dark Tower”) have arrived in the past year or two, suggesting a resurgence of interest. It was likely only a matter of time before Paramount Pictures exhumed this particularly venerable old property and checked for signs of life.

And up to a point, it finds them. As adapted by Jeff Buhler (with a story credit for Matt Greenberg) and directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, this “Pet Sematary” is a swift and efficient delivery system for mechanized jolts and pummeling thrills. It features fine performances from a cast that includes Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow and, crucially, the eight Maine coon cats playing the Creeds’ ill-fated feline. The actors are better and subtler than their earlier counterparts; the gore effects too. Moviegoers looking for an excuse to grab their companions’ arms for two hours could certainly do worse.

They could also do better, though, by going back to the novel. King’s story was an intimately detailed portrait of a happy, complicated family rocked by a series of unimaginable, exponentially compounded traumas.

Kolsch and Widmyer, who previously directed the indie thriller “Starry Eyes,” do not have the benefit of the novel’s measured pace and lengthy duration. Like the novel, “Pet Sematary” begins with Louis Creed (Clarke) and his wife, Rachel (Seimetz), arriving at their new home in Ludlow, Maine. They arrive with their young daughter, Ellie (Jete Laurence), and their toddler son, Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), as well as Ellie’s cat, Church.

Within a few minutes the Creeds have met their neighbor, an aging widower named Jud Crandall (Lithgow), in a nearby animal graveyard marked by a sign that reads “Pet Sematary.” The cutesy misspelling offers a subliminal clue that something is wrong here.

It gives nothing away to state that Church isn’t long for this world or to point out that the animal will make a singularly unpleasant return.