Film Review: Pet Sematary (2019): Sometimes, Old is Bettah

The creepy old Micmac burial ground is ready for another close-up in a brand-new reboot of Stephen King's Pet Sematary novel.

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Pet Sematary (2019), directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, from a script by Jeff Buhler and Matt Greenberg; based on the Stephen King novel of the same title; starring Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, and Jete Laurence.

The new Pet Sematary production is not a remake--but a reboot--of the beloved 1989 Mary Lambert version of Stephen King’s best-selling novel. The two directors, Kolsch and Widmyer, have horror cred as the helmers of the moderate hit, Starry Eyes (2014).

The new version changes many details of the original Mary Lambert movie and the book, dropping the back stories of Missy Dandridge and Timmy Baterman, and it also switches the identity of the child who is crushed by the passing truck. (This is shown in the trailers, so I'm not giving anything away.) The reason for the change in victims becomes apparent as the film gets closer to the very different ending.

At first, Pet Sematary ‘19 begins much the same as the book and the older film. A family called the Creeds buy a house in rural Maine, fleeing from the hustle and bustle of a modern metropolis (Boston here, instead of Chicago.) The father, Louis (Jason Clarke of last year's Winchester), is a doctor who has a new job at the local university's medical center. Rachel, the mother (played by Amy Seimetz of Stranger Things), is a housewife haunted by her gloomy childhood, most of which was spent caring for her disabled sister. The two kids are a nine-year-old girl named Ellie (Jete Laurence), and a toddler boy named Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie). The family has a tabby cat named Churchill, whom they all adore, especially Ellie.

Their new house is set back from a busy road that’s frequently traveled by huge, roaring trucks. The foreshadowing is pretty obvious, as the trucks zoom by all day and little Gage keeps toddling in their direction.

First Churchill the cat is killed by a truck and Louis foolishly allows his new neighbor, Jud Crandall (played by veteran actor John Lithgow), to show him where to bury the mangled cat, with unpleasant consequences. But when the truck road does its worst damage, it’s Ellie who is killed, while Louis is busy trying to snatch Gage out of the way of an oncoming truck. Then Louis makes the fatal decision to bury Ellie in the secret burial ground he learned about from Jud; this results in very unpleasant consequences.

There’s some creepy atmosphere here, but this reboot isn’t really all that scary. Pet Sematary ‘19 has better cinematography and production values, but it lacks the energy of the original. Missing as well is the investment the original made in developing the characters and making the viewer care about them. The pacing is also off a bit, with a slow-moving beginning and middle, followed by a very rushed third act.

One thing I also missed quite a bit was the strong sense of place that is present in the Lambert version, but not in the new one. In the older film, the rural Maine setting is very believable (it actually was filmed in Maine). The town locals speak with distinct New England accents (Missy Dandridge, Jud Crandall). The house the Creed family buys is a white clapboard Cape Cod, the type of house that most Americans would strongly associate with a New England location.

In the newer version, which was shot in Quebec, the Creeds buy a generic-looking red house that could be anywhere. The locals don’t have accents. Dropping the Dandridge and Baterman subplots also robs the film of a sense of place, by removing a look back at important local history. And that’s a shame, because a sense of place is fairly important in a film that’s about a bad, bad patch of ground lurking in the piney woods.

Clarke as Louis is a better actor than Dale Midkiff. Seimetz is kind of a wash as Rachel. She’s okay, but she’s not nearly as fetching to look at as Denise Crosby, nor does she have the same screen presence. (It’s sad that Crosby didn’t have a bigger film career, as the camera loves her face.)

The child actors are fine, although the new Gage isn’t nearly as captivating as chubby-cheeked Miko “no fair” Hughes. Lithgow turns in the best acting as old Jud Crandall, but he’s no real competition for Fred Gwynne’s iconic performance as Jud. The cat playing Churchill is nastier and scarier in the reboot; that's a plus.

All in all, I’d give this film about a 6.5 out of 10. It’s worth a rental, but it's not something anyone needs to rush out to see right this minute. In addition, King purists might be upset by the changes to the characters and plot.