Pet Sematary

The thing about Pet Sematary is that at it's core, the story is a tragedy.  For all of its supernatural trappings concerning zombie felines and murderous undead tykes, Stephen King's tale is ultimately a story of a family that can't deal with grief, and is ultimately torn apart by it.  The paranormal evil at work is just icing on the cake to add more thrills.  The 1989 film adaptation (which King himself wrote the screenplay of) followed the novel fairly closely, but missed a lot of the finer details of the story.  This, combined with the over the top and somewhat hokey performances, killed a lot of the tension for me that I remembered from the book.  So, I was kind of hoping that this remake would strengthen the characters and the heart of the story, and play up the tragedy that leads to all the usual creepiness that we expect from King.

But it would seem that in retelling the story, the directing team of Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer want to give us your standard spook house story with lots of jump scares, buckets of blood, and ghouls literally almost falling out of the medicine cabinet.  This is a technically sound movie, with strong performances, good visuals and audio design, and a certain creepy atmosphere.  But the movie stops there, and refuses to get to the heart of the story - The idea of a man being driven to madness through grief and whatever all-powerful evil may be lurking about in the forest far beyond the Pet Sematary itself.  It's there in some form, but it doesn't take center stage like it should.  And that's a big problem, because if you don't focus on that, then the lead character comes across as a clueless idiot who never learns from his own mistakes, rather than someone who is forced to repeat the same mistakes out of grief and obsession.  The earlier film had this same problem, albeit in more abundance.  Maybe this story just doesn't work on the screen, where we can't get inside the characters' heads like we can in a book.

At the very least, the filmmakers are not trying to make a carbon copy of the earlier adaptation here.  Though they more or less follow the basic plot and structure of King's story, they have intentionally thrown in some curves that seem to be designed to fool those familiar with past tellings into thinking the film is going to follow the same path, only to change course.  Unfortunately, the joy of this has unwisely been spoiled by a trailer campaign that reveals too much, and not only gives away one of the biggest changes to the story, but rubs the audiences' faces in it.  Why Paramount thought this was a good idea, I don't know.  I would have preferred to have walked in not knowing about a certain dramatic change to the third act.  Regardless, I won't be talking about it.  I just want to advise anyone reading to avoid any trailers if they have been lucky enough to do so up until now.

Just like before, we have Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moving his family to a small and fairly isolated farmhouse in Maine, where monster semi trucks roar down the street on a fairly regular basis, and there's a graveyard for pets not far from their backyard, where children hold solemn funeral processions while wearing creepy handmade animal masks that kind of look like they belong in a Kindergarten play set in the 8th Level of Hell.  I guess old Lou should have asked a few more questions about the property before he signed the lease.  He brings along his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz), who is constantly haunted by a traumatic childhood event involving the death of her sister, their inquisitive 9-year-old daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence), and adorable toddler Gage (twins Hugo and Lucas Lavoie).  Also on for the ride is pet kitty Church, who is cute and friendly, so obviously something terrible is waiting to happen.

Louis has moved to the country looking for a quieter life and maybe smaller medical cases.  Fat chance, as not long after he takes his new job, a college kid named Victor Pascow (Obssa Ahmed) shows up on Lou's operating table, his body smashed, and his brains leaking out of his skull. (Regardless of this, Louis tells Victor that he's not going to die today, mere seconds before the kid dies.) As for Ellie, she discovers the Pet Sematary not far from their new home, and meets the wise old man who lives across the street, Jud (John Lithgow), who knows all about the spooky history of the town and the dark forest that lies beyond the Sematary, but frequently brings Louis there anyway.  There's a powerful supernatural evil in those woods that draws you to it, forces you to bury your own, and then have the dead come back to life.  And before you can say "bad idea", Louis starts making his way to that forbidden site after he is met with a string of personal tragedies.

In the novel, where we get to truly delve into Louis' increasingly broken psyche and deteriorating mental state, this is creepy and effective.  It's less so here, because the movie never puts the tragic element of the story front and center like it should.  The movie Pet Sematary is too busy trying to make us jump in our seats with quick cuts of Church the cat hissing at the camera, or spooky children who happen to be handy with a scalpel blade.  It's more interested in exploring the gore and the ghostly elements, then truly getting to the heart of the story.  I wouldn't say that these characters are underwritten, but they are definitely missing something that both the novel and even the '89 film had somewhat.  The friendship that develops between Louis and old Jud that is so important to the story doesn't seem as deep here, so the human connection that is needed to bond them together is lacking.

Regardless of this, the performances here are very good, with both Lithgow as Jud and Laurence as little Ellie deserving special praise.  Any fault to be found here lies at the screenplay level, which seems to be in a rush to get to the effects and the spooky stuff.  And when it does try to focus on the vital human and tragic elements that are inherent in King's story, it doesn't come across as strong.  This may be because this movie was probably rushed into production after the last King adaptation we got, 2017's It, made over $300 million domestic.  To be fair, I think Paramount has been talking about doing a remake of this film for quite a while, but I'm sure after the opening box office numbers for the movie about the killer demonic clown came out, the ball to get this movie made started rolling a lot faster. 

I had the same problem with Pet Sematary that I had with last year's Halloween, which seemed to lose a lot of the intensity and genuine fear of the original it was emulating, and focused on the gore and special effects.  But, a lot of people loved that movie, so maybe they will love this also.  All I know is that I felt like I was getting a well made, but lesser experience by watching this.

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