Louis Creed, his wife Rachel, and their two children Gage and Ellie move to a rural home where they are welcomed and enlightened about the eerie ‘Pet Sematary’ located nearby. After the tragedy of their cat being killed by a truck, Louis resorts to burying it in the mysterious pet cemetery, which is definitely not as it seems, as it proves to the Creeds that sometimes, dead is better.
As a kid who was born in the late ’90s and wasn’t shown a lot of films that came before me, I had no knowledge of the renowned 1989 adaptation of the Stephen King novel “Pet Sematary.” This material was fairly new to me but the concept piqued my interest. With every studio wanting to have their own connected “movie universe,” the past three years has seen a rise in Stephen King’s material which has been everything from great (“IT”) to just flat out embarrassing (“The Dark Tower”). For me, “Pet Sematary” kind of teeters on the fence of the spectrum but leans more on the great.
Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) and his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) are a couple who move to a smaller town to focus more on their family, daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence) and son Gage (Hugo Lavoie). When tragedy strikes, Louis tries to return to normalcy by bringing back the dead by using the mysterious way of a burial ground shown to him by his neighbor Jud (John Lithgow). The ensemble of actors do a decent job as you would expect with the exception of Jete Laurence who steals the show and exemplifies great range in the film. Laurence is easily the standout with Jason Clarke also giving a typical great Clarke performance. The rest are just the same characters and portrayals we are familiar with, especially Lithgow’s Jud, who doesn’t add anything extraordinary to the cast.
Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer do an okay job in the director’s chair. Horror-wise, I wasn’t scared of the film, minus the typical jump scares every once in a while which I have grown numb to in the past few years. I didn’t get a unique voice from them with “Pet Sematary” but they don’t do a terrible job either. The same could be said for the technical elements of the movie excluding the score that is dark and chilling with heavy drums accompanied by violent violins. Storywise, the film is by-the-numbers of what you expect from anyone who has seen the trailers. There is sort of a departure from the original movie and book that this movie takes the liberty of doing which is great in making it fresh to audiences who are familiar with the previous iteration. I love the overall arc of the film and nothing seems forced or just there to fit the narrative up to the ending which I thought was bold (as someone who is new to the material). The screenplay is nothing to have serious qualms about.
All in all, “Pet Sematary” is a good addition to the new Stephen King Universe of the past few years. Good performances from the cast headed by Clarke and a terrific breakout performance from Jete Laurence. If you want a horror-thriller to catch at the theater, you won’t regret this one.
In theaters Friday, April 5th
