Pet Sematary (2019) | Film Review

Sometimes, dead is better.

These words ring out like church bells at Sunday Mass for fans of Stephen King’s original ode to death, Pet Sematary. The entire crux of the novel (and his screenplay for the 1989 film) centered on mankind’s inability to cope with the inevitable truth that we are all going to die. It’s inevitable and unavoidable. Spawned from the death of his daughter’s pet, King crafted an intricate tale of horrors that he himself did not fully appreciate at the time, yet the public lapped up in droves. And like a corpse reanimated by a Wendigo spirit, almost exactly 30 years after that first film, a remake has arrived and is viciously pounding on our door.

This time around, Jason Clarke stars as Dr. Louis Creed, a dedicated family man who relocates his wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), and their two kids, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (twins Hugo and Lucas Lavoie) to a home in the country for a taste of that small town life. It’s a beautiful area, even if semis barrel down their adjoining road at an alarmingly high speed. Next door to the Creeds lives Jud (John Lithgow), a shaggy but sweet widower, and a little further into the woods lies a pet cemetery. You know this, because the movie opens with an overdone funeral procession – kids in full animal masks – who make their way to this dour plot of land with a giant, misspelled sign looming over that says just that: Pet Sematary.

As a man of science, Jason Clarke portrays Louis rightly as steadfast in his reluctance to sugarcoat his view on death. Rachel disagrees vehemently, so when the family cat – the ironically named Church – goes down under one of those 18-wheelers, they agree to simply say Church ran away. But Jud has other plans.

You see, there’s something that lies far beyond the Pet Sematary. An ancient burial ground formerly used by Micmac Indians, and if you bury your dead here, it brings your loved ones back…but different. Jud doesn’t share this information straight away, yet when Church shows up the morning after they bury him roughly 645 nautical miles from the house looking disheveled and ready to lead a pack of White Walkers, Louis puts it together fairly quickly. And when one of his own children becomes a victim of those same mean trucks zipping by, science is promptly booted out the window – even after repeated warnings from beyond in the form of a dead patient – as despair engulfs Louis and forces him to give the cemetery another shot at reanimation. It doesn’t go well.

Remakes of classic films are always tricky, and make no mistake, Pet Sematary is a classic horror flick. Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer take on the unenviable task of creating something familiar but fresh in its own way. Sadly, their often sluggish pacing mixed with Jeff Buhler’s uneven script deliver a film that only serves to remind the audience – at every possible moment – how much better the 1989 original was.

Casting wise, Pet Sematary is served fairly well. While never as consumed with grief or as convincing in his plight as the vastly underrated Dale Midkiff was, Jason Clarke does a fine enough job holding up his end for the majority of the film. His version of Louis comes across more as a man in shock and disbelief than overwhelmed with guilt, but his sudden turn towards resurrecting his child in the third act feels more a product of “because the script told me to” than an actual character arc an audience can rally behind. This is a script issue, not necessarily Clarke’s, as the film spends an extraordinary amount of time explaining all of the reasons why Louis shouldn’t venture back out in those woods, and not nearly enough selling us on why he WOULD. Of the remaining cast, only John Lithgow truly leaves the proceedings delivering anything approaching memorable. Lithgow steps into the shoes of Fred Gwynne and remembers he’s there to make this character his own, which he immediately does with his textbook take on humanity.

Here lies my biggest issue with this iteration of Pet Sematary: every major event that happens is lifted from the script of the first film – each with their own “twist” to make it seem original – and every surprise or scare that occurs is a play on audience expectations from that same film. Every. Single. One. If you are expecting Church to drop a certain dead animal there, now it’ll be over HERE…and it’s still flapping! Think Jud’s ankle might get sliced in this scene, think again, now it’s LATER! If you are expecting Gage to get hit by that semi…you get the point.

If the entirety of your film rests on what the audience expects from another film, then is this truly even a remake? So much of this version of Pet Sematary is about subverting these expectations, that it becomes almost frustrating to watch the changes seemingly occur for the sake of change. Personally, I don’t care if it’s a direct recreation of the original; if a moment played better in 1989, mimic it or improve it. Because the problem with many of the differences here is that they aren’t better, in fact they often come closer to the results of Pet Sematary 2.

I have tried to avoid any spoilers, which is why I have not written much about what happens to the child after they return or Rachel’s recollection of her creepy deceased sister Zelda, but suffice it to say neither comes close to Mary Lambert’s take from 30 years prior. Instead we are left with a sluggishly paced remake that lives and dies solely on its connection to a film from three decades ago, and the changes that are made significantly increase the level of eye-rolling. For a movie about resurrecting the dead, Pet Sematary needs a hefty dose of life. And ultimately proves that sometimes, the original is better.