Pet Sematary (2019)

Overworked Boston ER doctor Louis Creed wants to spend more time with his family.

So he gets a job at a university and moves, with his wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), eight-year-old daughter Ellie (Jeté Laurence), toddler Gage (Hugo Lavoie/Lucas Lavoie), and Church the cat, to rural Maine.

In the woodlands at the end of their garden they discover the local "pet sematary", which is doing roaring business with the road that passes by the front of their property being a popular route for high-speed commercial haulage.

This is rather awkward as Rachel has problems explaining the concept of death to Ellie, as she blames herself for the death of her disabled sister.

Unfortunately, Church is run over by a lorry within days of the family moving in.

Friendly neighbour Jud (John Lithgow) shows Louis to a place beyond the 'pet sematary', deeper in the woods, where they bury the cat.

And the next day Church returns.

However, Louis quickly discovers it hasn't come back as the friendly family pet they remember.

As Jud - who had a similar experience with his family dog when he was younger - says: "Sometimes dead is better."

But then, on Ellie's ninth birthday, tragedy strikes the family and Louis is driven to an act that will their change their family forever.

Released digitally in the UK this week, Pet Sematary is, of course, not only an adaptation of the famous Stephen King novel, but a remake of the 1986 movie.

This new version, directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, from a screenplay by Jeff Buhler of Matt Greenberg's story based on King's novel(!), certainly tightens up some of the messy storytelling of the original (such as limiting the ghostly presence of Victor Pascow to, largely, a disembodied voice, while Rachel's visions of her sister are most definitely disturbed nightmares).

But there's still the central issue of why Jud would ever share his knowledge of the place where the dead can be brought back in the first place, because - as we saw in the first iteration of this cinematic tale - there's not a single jot of proof that these resurrections ever have a happy ending.

While I liked the Derry road sign Easter Egg, I felt that the potential "folk horror" aspect of the rural tale, as suggested by the children's parade to the 'pet sematary' (a striking element of the trailers and featured on the poster above), was a missed opportunity.

It turns out that the pet funeral procession was never utilised again; in truth the main characters don't even really interact with it.

Beyond letting the Creeds know about the cemetery at the end of their garden (which they could have found anyway), it serves simply as an excuse to give Ellie a scary mask for the final act.

Kudos though to young Jeté Laurence who turns in a terrifying performance at the climax of the movie - for instance, her conversation with her father, when he puts her to bed after her bath, is genuinely chilling.

And while it's the sort of ending I usually appreciate, I was unsure of the need for the nihilistic turn the story took in its closing scenes (unless that's the direction the original novel took).

I guess it's to show the dangers of bringing humans back from the dead, instead of just animals.

And potentially setting up a more apocalyptic, zombie-style, sequel...

Pet Sematary (1986)

Before the latest adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary hit cinemas in 2019, I thought I'd remind myself of the original from 1989, another veteran of the VHS years that I'm pretty sure I haven't seen for decades.

And, to be honest, while well made, it doesn't feel as though it has stood the test of time.

In a nutshell, a man is told - and witnesses with his own eyes - that if he does something, something bad will happen.

He does the something and the something bad happens.

Hilarity ensues.

A doctor, Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff), wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), and two young kids, Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes) move into a country house beside a road frequented by fast-moving lorries.

Thanks to friendly neighbour Jud Crandall (The Munsters' Fred Gwynne), they soon learn that in the woods behind their house is an old pet cemetery, where local pets killed on the road are buried.

However, while his family are away at Thanksgiving, Louis has to deal with the death of his daughter's beloved cat, Church, and so Jud leads him to an area way beyond the cemetery, a cursed Indian burial ground (because, America) that can supposedly bring creatures buried in it back to life.

But they come back "wrong".

Turns out the only time someone tried it with a human being, they turned into a flesh-eating zombie, so that's never been tried again.

Only, some time later, little Gage gets mown down on the busy road, and Louis kind of flips out (understandably), steals his corpse from the proper graveyard, and takes him up to the old Indian burial ground.

Naturally, the Gage that returns isn't Louis's beloved toddler... but a human Chucky doll intent on murder and mayhem.

Although working from a Stephen King screenplay, Pet Sematary has a whole host of problems, not least of which is that the central conceit - even if we accept that in this supernatural verisimilitude that the Indian burial ground has the power of resurrection - there are no anecdotes, not a single one, where using it has worked out for the best.

There is not a single iota of evidence to suggest that it brings someone back as anything except a soulless ghoul.

And yet, Jud still dangles it in front of Louis as a way to avoid having to teach his daughter about the fragility of feline life.

Then, on top of that, we have the kitchen sink approach to the story: there's an American Werewolf In London-style friendly ghost looking out for the family (Brad Greenquist); Ellie has very accurate and unambiguous prophetic dreams (which may be, but possibly aren't, connected to the appearance of the ghost); Rachel is haunted by her dead sister; when Gage returns from the dead he has the power to create very vivid illusions (something the earlier zombie in the film most certainly didn't have); in the denouement there's meaningful shots of clocks showing midnight - but time has never been mentioned as a factor in this process.

Even, stepping back from the surfeit of supernatural elements, towards the end of the movie a house burns down right at the side of the main road, but - even though considerable time passes afterwards - no fire engines or police cars ever show up to investigate.

I don't know if explanations were cut, or they were simply considered superfluous, but Pet Sematary feels - although it clearly wasn't, with Stephen King's direct involvement in the script - like a child making up a story as he goes along ("And then this happened, and then this, and you wouldn't believe what happened next...").

I'm hoping the remake corrects this jumbled storytelling and delivers a more cohesive narrative.

I get that the idea of a cursed burial ground that can bring people back from the dead is very creepy and that Pet Sematary is a tale about a man driven by grief to do something stupid and dangerous, but it's more contrived than convincing.