PET SEMATARY: A Chillingly Faithful Stephen King Adaptation That Does It Better Than the 1989 Version

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Produced by: Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Steven Schneider

Directed by: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer

Written by: Jeff Buhler

Production Company: Paramount Pictures

Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence, Naomi Frenette, Alyssa Brooke Levine, Maria Herrera   

Runtime: 101 minutes                                          

SYNOPSIS: 

Newly-appointed doctor Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) has just relocated with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and two children from Boston, Massachusetts to Ludlow, Maine.  Besides a nice family house, another part of the Creed’s property is a burial ground for animals called the “Pet Sematary” deep in the woods, which is rumored to have the power to resurrect the dead.  One day, when family tragedy struck, Louis heads to the Pet Sematary to try to prove that such rumor is true.  Louis’s action results in the summoning of dark spirits, who is clearly hell-bent on putting his family in harm’s way. 

REVIEW: 

Stephen King is one of the rare novelists out there who can still sell books solely through the sheer power of his own name. In this franchise-driven era where authors are often associated with only one particular title or one particular franchise, it’s really difficult to associate King with any one particular title or any one particular franchise. His one-off novels like Carrie or the Shining are as much of a Stephen King signature work as his franchise work with the Dark Tower series. With such a treasure trove of material, spanning multiple genres, it’s only a matter of time that Stephen King books will see the light of motion picture days. Since Carrie (1976), there have been hundreds of them, all with various qualities. Over four decades, King’s adaptations have introduced the world to prestige films as well as some stinkers (ahem! Cell (2016)). 

After a brief dry run in the 2000’s, Stephen King movie adaptations have had a late resurgence, reaching probably its highest peak in the late 2010’s. 2017 and beyond in particular has been the age of the Stephen King renaissance. Simply said, Stephen King content is everywhere. In a way, one must look back at It: Chapter One (2017) as the crucial foundation in the King media renaissance. On the financial side, that movie helps solidify the Stephen King brand as a box office juggernaut. On the quality side, since It: Chapter One was the second adaptation of the It novel (and some considers it the best one), it also opens up the unique opportunity for filmmakers to remake previous Stephen King novel adaptations that might have been considered a “failure”. 

One that many thinks deserves that second chance at the movies is Pet Sematary. It was adapted for the first time in 1989 by director Mary Lambert. Unlike most classics, 1989’s Pet Sematary wasn’t a universally beloved movie, having as much fans as its detractors. In an age of remakes, if there is any old movie that’s worth remaking, it’s this movie. But, as directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer might have noticed, Pet Sematary isn’t the ordinary movie remake. Their remake is not only going to be judged by whether it’s as good or even better than the 1989 movie, but also whether it’s a good adaptation of the 1983 novel. 

In the end, the best way to describe 2019’s Pet Sematary is by rephrasing Jud Crandall’s (played by John Lithgow in this version) famous line. If the original Crandall’s line, “sometimes dead is better” serves as a warning for the grieving Louis Creed, then within the context of the 2019’s Pet Sematary’s quality, then the rephrasing of such line serves as a compliment to Kolsch and Widmyer’s remake. Sometimes, remake is better. 

2019’s Pet Sematary is probably the most faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s book in a very specific way, the kind that might not please the masses. One’s enjoyment of this movie might depend on each filmgoer’s definition of a faithful movie adaptation. If one’s definition of a faithful movie adaptation means adapting the source material word-for-word, then the Mary Lambert’s 1989 version is the better movie than the 2019’s version. However, if one’s definition of a faithful movie adaptation means adapting the essence of the source material, then the 2019’s version is the better movie than the 1989’s version. Considering King’s personal connection to this particular source material, getting the essence right might just be more important than getting the content right. 

King has often stated many times in the past that Pet Sematary is the scariest story he has ever written, so much so that he hesitates to publish it (eventually, for financial reasons, he had to). Thankfully, 2019’s Pet Sematary is the closest a movie adaptation can get into putting the audience in King’s shoes. This movie offers exactly what was missing in the 1989’s version: a genuine sense of dread and unease. 

Like all the best horror movies, 2019’s Pet Sematary acknowledges that real horror comes from something that can be considered by many as “mundane”. And this particular horror movie lives more or less by the same rule, relying heavily on mood and atmosphere as its main source of scares. Jump scares are few and far between, with the movie being more interested in long, lingering imageries of creepy forest on the Creed family’s backyard to suggest that something just isn’t quite right about the Creed’s perceived calm countryside surroundings. Pet Sematary is less about giving the audience the odd few quick electric shocks to the heart, but more about sending shivers down their spine. 

After all, it’s a movie about a pet cemetery, and fittingly, death permeates throughout 2019’s Pet Sematary. In the King’s universe, death comes off as something that’s more chilling than it is shocking. Kolsch and Widmyer, along with the many people in the cinematography, production design and sound departments, really make sure that the movie looks and sounds like death all the way. Cinematographer Laurie Rose’s gritty gray visuals perfectly capture its underlying tone: dark, mirthless and almost hopeless. At the same time, the images would not spring to life without the environment to shoot it in the first place, which is laden with the sort of lush woods, vine-covered tombstones and forbidding fog needed for a proper horror movie setting. And what’s a horror movie without sound design, which blends the subtle sounds of nature’s silence and wildlife with the ear-piercing sounds of a passing truck to perfection. 

Going back to the fact that 2019’s Pet Sematary is much more faithful to King’s story in the way of atmosphere rather than the story itself, yes, there are going to be certain elements that might go one particular way in the novel and the 1989’s movie version that goes almost the complete opposite direction in this iteration. Other changes also include certain elements that might have made the cut in the previous versions ending up being omitted this time around. All of that aside, this movie still retains the novel’s basic premise, even if the narrative changes are going to be pretty noticeable. 

For instance, one change that sticks out is the switching of the lead child character. In previous versions, Gage emerged as the story’s lead child character, playing a prominent part in its most horror story-wise horrific moment as well as its most dramatically tragic ones. In this version though, Gage is downgraded to being a background character, with his older sister Ellie (Jete Laurence) now taking over her younger brother’s place. That doesn’t mean that the story itself drastically changes. What happened with Gage in the previous iterations more or less aligns to what happen with Ellie in this iteration. It follows the original beat-by-beat, with the exception that it’s experienced through the eyes of a different character. 

Fans might see such a change as controversial, but within the context of this movie, changing it up makes a whole lot more sense. It further hits home the movie’s core idea that death can make people go crazy. In a movie that sees a family face demonic undead, it’s their minds that are the real demon. In a mourner’s perspective, the demons come in the form of guilt, grief and loss. The whole movie is about how they deal with such demons, whether it’s Ellie with her deceased cat, Rachel with her deceased ailing sister Zelda (Alyssa Brooke Levine)’s death and later, Louis with a deceased member of his loved ones. In the end: can they move on from that? 

The movie decides to leave it open to the audience’s interpretation and imagination with its boldly ambitious, chillingly ambiguous ending, another deviation from the King’s novel. In King’s novel and its first movie adaptation, the ending was pretty definitive. Then again, it’s more suitable for a movie that continuously puts its characters in uncertain places to end with uncertainty. Not every horror movie ending has to be clear. Why can’t a movie have an ending that’s both happy and depressing? 2019’s Pet Sematary is one of those movies that can be interpreted as that: a movie with a twisted happy ending and a flat-out depressing one. Whatever the interpretation is, there is no right or wrong. 

Despite 2019’s Pet Sematary being better than the 1989 version, it has the same strengths and weaknesses. Kolsch and Widmyer’s version also suffers from slow-moving beginning and middle. That’s kind of normal for a horror movie that teeters on the edge of slow burn horror like a Pet Sematary. But perhaps, it might have taken the slowness a bit too far. 

The real problem here lies in its insistence on over-explaining the Pet Sematary mythology. The movie spends quite a considerable amount of time going into the details of what it is, what it can do, who resides in it, with screenwriter Jeff Buhler often using Lithgow’s character Jud Crandall to spew out all the Pet Sematary-related information through his back stories. 

Break the stories and information word-per-word, yes, they’re legitimately scary. Sometimes, the filmmakers take full advantage of Crandall’s back story and information to insert some effectively creepy flashback sequences. But there are far too many times where the expository moments consist of Louis and Jud just sitting around, reading books and hearing and telling back stories without actually getting the chance to see it or experience it, which sways more towards talky rather than creepy. In that aspect, the movie can get pretty boring. Some of what Jud is saying eventually comes into play in the third act, but barely. As much as that’s vital information in the novel, what worked in a novel doesn’t always work in the movies, as evident by this movie’s draggy first two acts. 

On the one hand, a fundamental part of storytelling is world-building, but on the other, Pet Sematary doesn’t really need an extensive world-building. It runs on the simplest of concepts: there’s a burial ground that has the ability to bring back the dead. What else is left unclear from that brief explanation? Pet Sematary would have had a scarier, more mystical ring to it if its origins are left ambiguous, with maybe a few sprinkles of expositions once in a while. Pet Sematary’s premise begs filmmakers to have more fun with it. This movie’s all-out insane third act is just a glimpse of what could have been if Kolsch and Widmyer were allowed to fully commit to the premise’s insanity, but they are so often constrained by the script’s tendency for heavy expositions. 

Another problem with the 2019’s Pet Sematary lies unfortunately in the main protagonist Louis Creed. As a main protagonist for a horror movie, particularly one with a more psychological leaning, Louis is pretty bland. It’s easy to blame King’s novel as the underlying source for the lead’s lack of characterization, but at the same time, movie adaptations have the right to perform artistic license. Simply said, 2019’s Pet Sematary has every right to make Louis a far more interesting character than previous incarnations. Yet this movie doesn’t fully seize such golden chance. As a result, like in King’s novel as well as Mary Lambert’s movie version, Louis remains thinly-written. 

Describing Louis’ character is similar to describing his everyday profession. He is just the town’s doctor, a family man, and really not much more under the surface. He doesn’t have the personality or relatability needed to make him a protagonist people can latch onto emotionally. It’s not as if Buhler’s script doesn’t have an interesting spin on the character. Through Louis’ eyes, Buhler wants to challenge the audience by bringing an existential subject to the fore, particularly one man’s struggle with his own faith. Throughout Louis’ arc, faith is his constant personal demon. Still, that is not a strong enough personal demon for a lead character, especially if compared to what the other supporting characters had went through and is now going through. It takes a truly horrific tragedy right about the movie’s second act to give Louis a stronger personal demon to deal with.  In the end, one cannot help but think that experiencing the proceedings through the supporting character’s eyes would have made the movie far more effective as a psychological horror. 

Still, having a talented actor play such a thinly-written role helps. That is the case, with Jason Clarke’s dynamic portrayal of Louis Creed in 2019 easily trumping Dale Midkiff’s flat portrayal in 1989 for one specific reason: acting range. He’s the perfect guy to smoothly depict Louis’ radical personality shift. He’s just as believable as a loving, innocent everyman/suburban father of two kids as when he is later an unhinged madman. He is the movie’s most reliable scaredy-cat as well as scarer. But most importantly, in contrast to Midkiff’s, Clarke’s portrayal allows the audience to feel what Louis is supposed to feel. Joy is different from loss or insanity, and Clarke is the better guide to take the audience through his emotional whirlwind every step of the way. 

And the remake’s lead actor’s ability to do a better job than the original version’s lead actor sets the tone in terms of the level of acting in 2019’s Pet Sematary. There’s a huge chasm between the cast’s performances in the 1989 version and the ones in the 2019 version, in which the latter comes out on the right side. 

Like Clarke, Amy Seimetz’s committed portrayal of Louis’ concerned wife Rachel easily trumps Star Trek veteran Denise Crosby’s somewhat half-hearted portrayal of that same character for a similar reason: acting range. Rachel Creed isn’t the typical horror movie concerned wife character. In the novel, she is drawn as a character with so much emotional baggage behind her, and Seimetz is the only actress who can sell this aspect of Rachel Creed more consistently. She can actually make the audience feel the weight that’s hanging on Rachel’s shoulder throughout the movie, not just in the one flashback sequence involving her encounter with her sick sister. Seimetz lays her soul bare in every scene she’s in, with her every emotional breakdown and panic a gateway into her incurable trauma and fear. 

John Lithgow has a much tougher shoe to fill compared to the other cast members, since Fred Gywnne made a pretty good account of himself as the Creeds’ friendly, elderly neighbor Jud Crandall back in 1989.  And in the end, Lithgow’s rendition of Jud Crandall deserves to be as fondly remembered as Gwynne’s portrayal. It’s also refreshing to see Lithgow sticking to his own interpretation of the character rather than ape Gwynne’s interpretation. 2019’s Jud Crandall is still the same warm and friendly man fans know from the novel, but with a slight curmudgeon bite to him that is far removed from Gwynne’s bear-hugging friendliness. Such portrayal makes more sense in this particular reality for a character whose been constantly worn down by personal hurt. 

Lastly, it’s almost mandatory in these horror movies that there’s one stand-out child performance, and Jete Laurence’s turn as the Creed family’s eldest daughter Ellie is the latest recipient in that category. Laurence proves to be equally adept in handling the dramatic and horror demands of the role. She’s given a lot of tough, existential lines to work with, and astonishingly, she speaks out each and every line with the type of conviction and maturity that belies her youthful age. Like any horror movie child, there’s got to be a time when the darkness brewing inside such an innocent child is waiting to explode, and when that time comes, she puts it to effective use, creepily creeping towards the movie’s latter stages with twisted childlike glee. 

CONCLUSION: 

Pet Sematary is a chilling, unsettling cautionary tale about the consequences of tampering with the dead that closely captures the bleakness and horror of Stephen King’s novel as well as being the rare movie remake that easily surpasses the 1989 original. 

Score: 7.5/10