AT THE MOVIES

by Isy Jordan

Pet Sematary
Director: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow and more...

Dr. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, relocate from Boston to rural Maine with their two young children. The couple soon discover a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near their new home.

I'm a huge Stephen King fan and I'll start by saying that I loved the book Pet Sematary. The first movie based on this book was released in 1989 and it was, in my humble opinion, a good effort and a terrifying little movie that was mostly loyal to the original material. The cast was good, the effects (for the time period) were good and chilling. If it had ended up being the only film made of the terrifying novel, it was good enough.

But everything gets remade these days and this is no exception. When I heard they were making a new film for Pet Sematary, I was a little skeptical but willing to give it a try. Maybe it would be as good as the first film? Maybe, judging from the author's tweets, it would be better.

Let's start with the story. There were a lot of changes from the book and I get why that happens. The translation from book to screen isn't a perfect process. However, here so much was changed that at times, it didn't seem like the same story. Take the change in which child died. In the books, it was Gage who was struck and killed by the truck and he was a toddler. Here, they changed it to Ellie, the older child, and that's in the trailer so I don't think that's too spoilery. I'm sure the thought process was that it would be easier to work with an older child actor on being a creepy, re-animated being than a toddler and give an edgy new facet to the work too. They just didn't manage to pull it off.

Also, in the books, what came back from the Pet Sematary wasn't the one who died. It was the body inhabited by a demon entity. In the film, it didn't go that way and the change, for a fan of the book, was more than a little disappointing.

The cast did the best they could given what they had to work with. It's a real shame John Lithgow found himself in this mess because he's extremely talented and could do a lot more. They could have used him differently here to great effect. They didn't even try to realize the friendship his Jud had with Louis from the book or the rich history Jud's stories added to the original tale. He just showed up here and there. In fact, none of the characters felt very three dimensional which makes it hard to care about what happens to them. The effects were okay. The settings seemed very low budget.

What happened to the MicMac indians? Just sayin'. And Rachel's backstory with Zelda? Come on.

At 101 minutes, the film really doesn't seem to drag. There's a lot going on but it's different enough from the book to alienate fans of that and removed enough emotionally that most people who see it will find it hard to relate or feel much in the way of sympathy for anyone aside from the children. And Church. Church was brilliant. The film is rated R for a ton of violence and gore, a little language, and a lot of disturbing. If you like a good horror flick and you haven't read the book or viewed the original movie, you might enjoy this film very much. As someone who has done both, it was a hard sell for me.

Isy