Pet Sematary (2019) - Review

When it comes to remakes, I don’t really have as much of an issue with them as most people. I understand their purpose as a re-introduction to the public to try to make money off a new generation of potential fans with something that already proved to be successful and popular in the past. If you’re a fan of the original, all you can really do is hope that whatever gets made is at least comparable, if not better than the source material. This then makes it more perplexing when the remake of a movie is a remake of something that was never good to begin with, but for some reason is remembered fondly. You can likely blame it on nostalgia in some respects, but there are plenty of other factors that might have a role. For example, the remake of Stephen King’s IT was an overwhelming blockbuster success, financially speaking. So, of course, movie executives out there wanted to remake anything and everything with King’s name attached to it. We’ve already gotten a Carrie remake, and a sequel to The Shining, it was only a matter of time before we started dipping into the movies that aren’t very good and hoping for something better this time around. Naturally, I’m referring to Pet Sematary.

Pros

Some decent makeup and special effects in certain spots
Acting is mostly good, if not flat
A little more effort is paid to justify why the old man would reveal the burial ground, but not much
Some pointless characters are almost completely removed—some may consider this a con

Cons

Still a bad story with characters who do pointless and obviously foolish things for the convenience of the plot
Some character details still serve very little purpose in making them more interesting or flushed out
Some rules about how the dead come back to life get broken or conveniently changed at the end
Dull and lacks tension

Plot & Thoughts

Louis (Jason Clarke) is a doctor who has moved away from city life to the quiet Maine countryside to work as a general practitioner on a local college campus. His wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), and his children, Ellie (Jete Laurence) and Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), accompany him, along with their cat, Church. The house they moved to seems perfectly normal, and even after a bit of warming up, the somewhat aloof neighbor Jud (John Lithgow) becomes friendly. It seems like a pretty average place that happens to have a highway that runs right through the property and is a significant safety hazard for humans and pets. As a result, there is a small graveyard for pets nearby that was established by the children of the area who have lost their beloved animals on the highway. But despite the film’s misspelled name, this isn’t a movie about children burying their pets.

At some point, Church meets his end. In an effort to avoid teaching Ellie about death, Jud shows Louis a special place beyond the local pet cemetery that is mystical, weird, and several miles out of the way for him to bury a cat. Of course, doing so brings the cat back to life, but it’s different than before. It’s meaner. It smells like something dead. It has clumps of hair and skin coming out. It’s a zombie cat, but at least Ellie doesn’t have to be taught a harsh lesson, right? Even if you haven’t seen the original movie or read the book, you know how the situation might escalate by asking the obvious question: if it can bring back animals, can it do that with people? Of course, it can, because that’s the whole point of this movie!

Let me be clear, I never thought the 1989 movie was good, for reasons that have more to do with the nature of the story than with its execution. Thus, I had pretty low expectations for this one because unless the story and the characters in it drastically changed, a new flashy remake with better effects wouldn’t make the experience any more interesting. There are a few changes they made, such as the obvious reduction in the role of side characters who never really seemed necessary to the plot, like Victor (Obssa Ahmed), the ghost of the guy that Louis tries to save early in the film. There’s also a bit of a switch in how the final act plays out. Both of these changes are probably for the better but do little to fix the underlying issues with Pet Sematary.

It’s not a scary or tense movie, even as you approach the end. There are some irrelevant character subplots that are used for jump-scare purposes or just as feeble attempts to inject some dread into this boring film. However, it’s just as dull as the original in a lot of respects. Nothing happens for a long time until smart characters and dumb characters start doing very dumb things and everything goes to hell. Unfortunately, the process of everything falling apart takes a long time to get there and is plagued by conveniences and arbitrary plot points.

TL;DR

If you were someone who actually liked the 1989 version of Pet Sematary, I can’t imagine you’ll have much of an issue with the 2019 remake, because not too much has changed. Some have changed for the better, but not enough to make me think any differently of either movie. I’d call this a failure if I didn’t already think that of the original. Hopefully, when the remake train finally pulls up to Stephen King’s other trashy nonsense like The Langoliers and The Tommyknockers, it just keeps rolling by and we don’t get any remakes of those.

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