It’s a tried and tested formula for horror movies: the “be careful what you wish for.”
The trope itself carries a pathos to it. Its whole conceit, taking one’s heart’s desire then flipping it to be a great source of dread.
The irony, the thought of chasing desire not only being futile but corruptive, maybe that’s why this class of horror persists in the genre.
Stephen King’s 1983 novel Pet Sematary takes full advantage of this theme. King extends the pathos by crafting an intimate character study on grief and guilt told through a family tragedy.
Arguably, this bleak introspection on the human condition is the reason why King himself considers Pet Sematary his “darkest” work — one which he even considered not publishing.
It’s a story that is maybe too close to comfort.
This sheer strength of the source material brought to life by deft direction and strong performances makes the Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer-directed Pet Sematary a welcome addition to Stephen King’s cinematic oeuvre.
Bringing new life to King’s classic
Kölsch and Widmyer’s Pet Sematary is already the second adaptation of King’s novel. Still, it stays quite faithful to the central concept of the original book and Mary Lambert’s 1989 film.
Boston ER doctor Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), tired of the grind of his job and longing to spend more time with his family, decides to move his family to the small town of Ludlow, Maine.
Their new home comes with a sprawling lot extending into the woods behind their house. Woods that just so happen to include a mysterious burial ground that can bring the dead back to life.
Kölsch and Widmyer’s Pet Sematary is a balanced remake. It draws heavily enough from the original to retain its DNA, but it also has its fair share of twists and turns to make the film feel fresh.
Albeit some of these alterations are bound to be polarizing. (We’ll get into this later.)
“Middle-ground” horror
Another reason why I call the 2019 Pet Sematary a balanced remake is because it is able to strike a middle ground between the popcorn flair of today’s post-Blumhouse mainstream horror and the artistic leanings of “elevated horror.”
The film mixes its use of straightforward jump scares and overt grotesqueness with scenes that play with these exact conventions—some prolonging tension or subverting the delivery of the scare.
This willingness to innovate leads to scenes which are able to create terror in the mundane. E.g., a scene where dread is delivered aurally, through the simple act of combing matted hair.
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Dreams and reality blur, fog possesses the screen, and nighttime shots are photographed in a style reminiscent to Bryan Fuller’s stylishly-gothic TV series Hannibal.
Spirited performances
What truly elevates Pet Sematary though are the performances which the film is anchored on.
Assembling an ensemble of reliable character actors such as John Lithgow, Jason Clarke, and Amy Seimetz, the source material’s inherent pathos is strengthened.
All characters effectively carry their baggage on their shoulders: Lithgow’s world-weariness, Clarke’s resignation to the fact that death will forever be part of his life as a doctor, and Seimetz’s trauma that leads her to see anything related to death as toxic (this, of course, creates conflict between her and on-screen husband, Clarke).
Jeté Laurence, who plays the Creed’s daughter, Elle, is the film’s breakout star though as she is capable of seamlessly switching from sweet and innocent to menacing and malicious.
The remake’s decision to turn Ellie into the resurrected Creed child is an inspired choice. Being undead in the film is given dimension.
Compared to the younger Creed, Gage’s “killer zombie baby” in the original, nine-year-old Ellie is at the cusps of fully-forming her cognition. She is starting to understand concepts such as consent, the weight of death, etc.
For her to be subject to a crash-course on these subjects via the abruptness of her passing adds sympathy to her corruption but at the same time makes it more unnerving.
A finale that flatlines
Pet Sematary’s most significant flaw for me is its finale.
Without spoiling, the film enters schlocky territory by going for an ending counterintuitive to its thematic build-up. One that feels more conventionally shocking rather than more cerebral, the more poignant kind you’d think, based on everything the film’s shown so far, it would go for.
Maybe for this instance, they could have taken closer inspiration from the source material?
Regardless, the Pet Sematary remake occupies the upper-to-mid tier of Stephen King adaptations. Not quite The Shining, not quite Misery, but up there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceYJX-y6rho
