PET SEMATARY (2019)

Studio:      Paramount Pictures
Director:    Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Writer:      Jeff Buhler, Matt Greenberg
Producer:  Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Steven Schneider
Stars:     Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, Jete Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed, John Lithgow

Review Score:

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Summary:

A distraught father exploits a cursed burial ground to bring his child back from the dead.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Dr. Louis Creed moves with his wife Rachel, daughter Ellie, toddler son Gage, and Ellie’s cat Church from Boston to a quiet country home in Ludlow, Maine.

Rachel and Ellie observe children in animal masks performing a funeral procession as they enter the woods in the Creed Family’s backyard to bury a pet. Ellie later explores the woods and discovers a pet cemetery. In the cemetery, Ellie meets the family’s neighbor Jud Crandall. Rachel briefly meets Jud when she comes to escort Ellie back home.

Louis learns about the pet cemetery when Ellie asks him about death. Rachel and Louis disagree over what to teach Ellie about the possibility of an afterlife.

At the university hospital where he works, Louis is unable to save the life of Victor Pascow, an ER patient who suffered a violent head injury. Louis feels haunted after he experiences a vision of Pascow cryptically warning him about a barrier that was not meant to be broken. Louis mentions that Pascow called him by name when he tells Rachel about the incident.

Ellie goes to see Jud, who tells Ellie about his deceased wife Norma. Jud joins the Creeds for dinner. The pet cemetery comes up in conversation.

During the night, another vision of Victor Pascow leads Louis to the pet cemetery to issue another warning that the ground beyond the woods is sour. Louis dismisses the vision as a dream even though he wakes up with dirt on his feet.

While Ellie prepares to go trick-or-treating for Halloween, Jud shows Louis that a speeding Orinco truck killed her cat. Louis tells Rachel that Church died, which inspires Rachel to continue thinking about her dead sister Zelda. Rachel recalls how her deformed sister died horribly by falling into a dumb waiter where Rachel put Zelda’s food because she was scared to face her sister in person.

Jud accompanies Louis to the pet cemetery to bury Church. Hearing a haunting voice calling to him, Jud feels compelled to escort Louis to a hidden burial ground beyond the trees where he instructs Louis to build a rock cairn over the cat’s grave.

Louis and Rachel tell Ellie that Church ran away. However, Church unexpectedly returns, but as a more feral animal.

Louis asks Jud what happened with Church, but Jud only speaks cryptically about the burial ground. Louis does research online and discovers that the burial ground was tribal land rumored to be capable of bringing dead animals and people back to life.

Ellie asks Louis to keep Church out of her room after the cat viciously claws her. Rachel becomes frightened when she sees Church eating a live bird in front of her and Louis.

Louis experiences another vision of Victor Pascow issuing a warning. Rachel experiences a haunting vision of Zelda.

Seeing Church stalking Gage in his crib inspires Louis to talk to Jud about the pet cemetery again. Jud tells Louis a legend involving the Wendigo while recounting how local tribes fled the area because they believed the woods belonged to something evil. Jud tells Louis how his childhood dog Biffers turned feral after being resurrected. Jud thought it would be different with Church, but admits he was wrong to show Louis the burial ground.

Louis considers euthanizing Church. Instead, Louis drives Church far away and sets him free.

The Creeds host a backyard birthday party for Ellie. Church’s unexpected return draws Ellie into the road. Gage also runs toward the road. When Louis spots a speeding Orinco truck approaching, he races toward his son. Louis rescues Gage, but the truck swerves, causing its tanker to detach. The skidding tanker strikes and kills Ellie.

Feeling the need to get away after Ellie’s funeral, Rachel takes Gage back to Boston to stay with her parents. Left home alone, Louis goes to Jud’s to drink. Jud warns Louis not to use the cemetery to resurrect Ellie by saying the place feeds on your grief and gets into your mind. Jud passes out from the alcohol.

After taking a call from Rachel, Louis digs up Ellie’s corpse. Ignoring another warning from Pascow’s ghost, Louis reburies Ellie in the cursed ground.

At her parents’ house, Rachel experiences a bloody vision of Zelda’s death in the dumb waiter. Rachel is surprised when Gage mentions Pascow after Pascow’s ghost briefly appears to the boy.

Ellie returns home to Louis in a ghoulish form. Clumps of hair fall out of Ellie’s head while Louis bathes her. Possessed by the Wendigo’s spirit, Ellie tells Louis that she can hear the woods inside of her. The next day, Ellie enters a sudden rage while dancing in her dirty funeral dress.

Rachel tries calling Louis to tell him about Gage’s Pascow vision. Unable to reach her husband, Rachel calls Jud to ask him to check on Louis.

Louis skittishly refuses to allow Jud inside his house. Sensing something is wrong, Jud sees Ellie in an upstairs window. Jud rushes back to his house for safety.

Armed with her father’s scalpel, Ellie attacks Jud in his home. Ellie taunts Jud by taking the form of his dead wife Norma and making accusatory insults. Ellie stabs Jud to death.

Rachel returns home with Gage. Louis tells Rachel about the burial ground as Ellie enters the room. Horrified by what her daughter has become, Rachel refuses to embrace Ellie. Ellie tells Louis that she doesn’t want Rachel around anymore.

Overcome by the Wendigo’s influence, Rachel experiences a vision where she becomes her deformed sister Zelda. Ellie attacks her.

Louis goes to Jud’s house and finds Jud murdered. Suddenly realizing the danger to his family, Louis rushes back home.

Unable to escape the house, Rachel drops Gage down to Louis from an upstairs window. Louis locks Gage inside a car for safety.

Ellie insultingly taunts Rachel and then stabs her. Before dying, Rachel begs Louis not to bury her in the pet cemetery.

Ellie knocks Louis unconscious. Ellie then drags Rachel’s body to the cursed ground and buries her.

After recovering, Louis goes to the cemetery to confront Ellie. Louis and Ellie fight. Just as Louis is about to decapitate Ellie with a shovel, Rachel impales Louis from behind. Rachel and Ellie bury Louis in the cursed ground.

Accompanied by Church, the three resurrected family members set fire to Jud’s house. Louis, Rachel, and Ellie then unlock the car as they approach Gage.

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Review:

This analogy makes a stretch, but you’ll catch the drift. Think of director Mary Lambert’s 1989 “Pet Sematary” as the Marvel Cinematic Universe adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. Not in terms of being lighter, brighter, or more “fun” the way many people popularly compare the two rivaling superhero styles. Rather, it’s emotionally driven by enigmatic personalities, relatively energized in spite of its themes, and maximized for broad entertainment appeal.

Adapted by Jeff Buhler and Matt Greenberg, directing duo Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s 2019 “Pet Sematary” qualifies as closer in tone to a DC Extended Universe interpretation of King’s source material. Using the same characters, everyone comes across as grimmer, and their circumstances more somber. It’s a movie whose persistently gloomy portents, for richer or for poorer, make for a distinctly dark mood.

Ordinarily, it might be poor form to pit one adaptation against another instead of evaluating each on independent terms. Except “Pet Sematary” 2019’s biggest twists directly depend on familiarity with the first film, or at least with the book. Kolsch and Widmyer want you to have “Pet Sematary” 1989 in your mind’s eye. Without expectations to toy with, the buzzed-about change involving you-know-what as well as a lesser bait-and-switch built around Jud’s Achilles tendon don’t have nearly the same sting.

Even temporarily, it would be foolhardy to pretend Lambert’s version doesn’t exist. “Pet Sematary” 1989 has as many memorable moments as any King adaptation, from Gage’s pale hand bobbling in his overturned casket to Dale Midkiff’s all-time great “no!” shouted while the boy’s shoe tumbles in slow motion. It’s not realistic to think any horror film fan could turn off the light on an indelible image like nightmare-inducing Zelda and look at “Pet Sematary” 2019 in a vacuum.

A “remake,” if we can loosely use that word to broadly categorize “Pet Sematary,” always faces a rock and a hard place dilemma. Change too much and diehards scream, “sacrilege!” Change too little and what’s the point in having two versions of largely the same thing? In this specific situation, the problem presented is that because the 1989 adaptation showed us what alternative options look like, some of “Pet Sematary” 2019’s deviations pale as lesser creative choices.

For all of the pearl-clutching purists did based on the trailer’s spoiler, the movie’s most controversial change proves to be its most inspired. Swapping Gage for Ellie at the story’s crucial pivot point isn’t a hollow hook being different as a shock-and-awe stunt. The switch matures the interaction dynamics of the movie’s main players in a way that renders accusations of redundancy moot.

Ellie’s agency recalibrates how their child relates to Louis and Rachel in life and after her reburial. There’s an intriguing element to her having the ability to communicate as well as manipulate outside of being chillingly, but emptily adorable. Zombie Gage has his own unique appeal as a villain and resurrected Ellie has hers. If it did nothing else, this take alone cements “Pet Sematary” 2019 as its own thing.

“Pet Sematary” 2019 encounters less success with the other ways it reconfigures characterizations. Like the overall movie, every person arrives accompanied by bleak baggage.

Jason Clarke’s arc from affectionate father to macabre mourner follows a shorter curve than Dale Midkiff’s. Chalk it up to playing cold roles in films like “Terminator Genisys” or “Winchester,” but Clarke’s inherent intensity puts his personality under overcast skies to begin with. His Louis Creed doesn’t feel like he is transforming into someone he shouldn’t be so much as becoming the troubled man he always was underneath.

Similarly, his relationship with wife Rachel receives one scene of giggling physical affection, a requirement for establishing any happy film family upon moving into a new home. After that, actress Amy Seimetz descends down a spiral of nagging guilt regarding her deformed sister’s death, depression due to her family’s fate, and abject fear for the horrors in her home. Seimetz precisely plays what the script asks from her part. Yet like her husband, Rachel rarely wears an expression that doesn’t radiate defeat, causing her to seem perpetually put-upon instead of gradually ground down into haunted madness.

“Pet Sematary” 2019 sorely misses the camaraderie between Louis Creed and Jud Crandall, which is essential to the 1989 film’s emotional core. Instead of establishing him as Louis’ “come on up to the porch and have a beer!” buddy, Jeff Buhler’s script weirdly sets up Jud as another father figure for Ellie, which she doesn’t need. Maybe material went missing from the final edit, but Jud doesn’t even meet Louis until he suddenly appears at the Creed Family dinner table. This doesn’t give the two men the affectionate bond they need for their burial ground journey to be believable.

In another strange slant on the character, John Lithgow plays Jud as curiously cryptic, occasionally standoffish, and more than a bit brusque in demeanor. While his performance stays strong, Lithgow’s Jud loses out to the infectious amiability Fred Gwynne put into the same person.

Victor Pascow comes up shortest of all, reduced to irrelevancy as an apparent afterthought addition. Louis ignores the apparition’s warnings not because he is obsessively blinded by grief, but because Pascow has an unnoticeable presence. While they were making changes, the filmmakers should have had the courage to excise some of this inconsequential content entirely.

What does make the cut constitutes a mean version of “Pet Sematary,” and I don’t say that derogatorily. The movie dunks itself in a steaming cup of dread that drips into every detail, whether it’s the twisted new addition to Zelda’s origin or the extended viciousness of Church the cat. This “Pet Sematary” takes Stephen King’s original intentions of piling terror on top of grief and pushes that cinematic sense of evil eeriness as far as it can go. The tradeoff sacrifices some palatable appeal.

Not unlike the forced metaphor mentioned earlier, one “Pet Sematary” versus another comes down to individual tastes. Some may prefer Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s gritty vision over Mary Lambert’s interpersonal take. Yet while I appreciate many of the detours “Pet Sematary” 2019 turns down from an originality standpoint, if I had to Sophie’s Choice which adaptation I’d rather press Play on for another watch, I’m picking 1989 every time.

Review Score: 65

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