Happy FearStyle Friday, everyone. I hope we are all ready to dive deep into today's topic, 2019's Pet Sematary. I have really thought about how I was going to approach this review and I think I have it worked out. First, I wanted to wait a little bit for the movie to be out for a little while, allowing most horror fans to have a chance to see this movie for themselves. Second, I wanted to write this as subjectively as possible. So keep in mind that my opinions about this movie are just that, opinions. You may not agree with me and, with what I have been seeing all over the Internet, most of you won't. I just want to have a chance to put my two cents into the conversation before it doesn't matter. So, let's talk about it.
As all of you know, Pet Sematary is a story from the twisted mind of Stephen King. The novel is full of heartbreak and the struggles one faces with death, religion, playing God and the consequences within. With all that said, I felt like the new adaptation of this moving story was not done justice. I will break this down piece by piece, because not all of it was bad. I want to start by saying that I went into the theater knowing that it was going to be a different approach to the King story. However, I was not impressed with how most of the movie was executed. It felt bland and just another dime a dozen horror film that we see now of days.
*Before you go any further, if you haven't seen the movie and don't want it to be spoiled, then don't read any further. I am going to spoil the film!*
Let's start where any story starts, in the beginning. I was instantly put off by the movie when they opened with them approaching the home and you get this vibe that there is some dark past that they are trying to get away from. It seems bizarre, but I am willing to look past this..for now. What I can't get past is the light in which the film is shot. The home itself looks depressed in this blue hue that takes over the whole film, and you get this notion that the Creeds aren't really looking forward to their new home. I guess if you saw it in the light portrayed in the film, you wouldn't be that stoked either. Now the point of the family moving to Maine, in the book, is so the family can have a slower paced life, enjoy time with their young children and set roots. It really is a staple of hope in the story. However, it is not depicted in this light in the new movie. You feel like the house is evil and holds nothing but ill intentions for the new family and that isn't right. If anything the house is the only safe haven. Then there is the wife character. She just looks too sad for the beginning of the film. Isn't this supposed to be an exciting change in your life? Then why are you so sad? All the kids look happy. More on that later.
So, everyone is settling into their new home when the Rachel (the mom) and Ellie (daughter) witness a creepy funeral procession where the children are donning creepy animal mask. I did like this, it is a good opening for the topic of religion and death and you can tell right away how it has traumatized Rachel. In order to avoid any conversation about death with her daughter, Rachel takes Ellie home, to watch Spongebob and have some lunch. However, when Rachel turns away for one second, Ellie runs off to discover the Pet Sematary. She even tries to climb the barrier. Silly child. It is here that she meets Jud Crandall, played by John Lithglow. He of scares her off the huge mountain of sticks and then helps pull a stinger out of her leg. She is fond of him instantly, but when Rachel finds her daughter she acts all scared and antisocial. It seems like she doesn't like Jud at all. It is really weird. In the novel, and I am really not trying to connect it so much to the novel but Jud is sort of a paternal character to everyone in the Creed Family. The connection is instantaneous. It can be argued that this was their first encounter with him and it does come off a bit creepy that an old man is alone with a little girl in the woods, but it is completely innocent. I also want to add that there was no real introduction between Louis and Jud, yet Jud is just welcomed to family dinners and get together's. You get this vibe that they don't really like each other either which again is weird. I didn't like the uncomfortable chemistry between the two characters. I also want to add that Louis and Gage are the only two characters that haven't been to the pet sematary yet, which leads me to the next point in the movie; Louis's introduction to the pet sematary.
Okay, so by this point in the film we are getting to see the day in the work life of new university doctor, Louis. We gather that his job pretty mundane, dealing with regular run of the mill kid illness stuff. Strep throat mostly, when we get that, what was for me, a pivotal moment in the film...the death of Victor Pascow. If you haven't seen the original movie or read the book, Pascow is a college student that gets hit by a car and dies, but he comes back to help Louis stay away from the impending doom that is the pet sematary. He kind of serves as a ghostly conscience, warning him that "the ground is sour" and that "the barrier is not to be broken". So, what happens in the new one is that Pascow is killed and says nothing to him. I was confused, at first, then they did it. You know, try to amp up the scare by having Louis look away and then look back to find Pascow sitting straight up and uttering in a ghoulish voice, his final words. I didn't like this because sometimes less is more. I would have been more terrified if he would have simply gurgled his final words and warning to Louis in a silent scare, instead of this ghostly encounters thing that film makers keep trying to push on us. The audience isn't dumb, we can pick up on a silent scare. Not everything needs to make us jump in our seats. Aren't we familiar with the phrase "sent shivers down my spine"? Keep in mind that we aren't even half way through the film yet and I am so irritated. So, if that wasn't enough, we have the dream sequence where, finally, Louis gets to see the Pet Sematary. This was creepy in its own right, I'll have to admit, because Louis hasn't seen the sematary at this point, so he has no idea where he even is. Plus, we get the central message of the film which is no matter how much your heart aches, sometimes dead is better. However, this is one of the only times we get to see Pascow and that blows. He is supposed to be the voice of reason for Louis (even though he doesn't listen in any version of the story).
Let's fast forward a little bit. As Louis and Rachel struggle to become more comfortable with their new living situation and the events thus far, Church dies. Ellie's cat dies. Jud, who has become close to the little girl, doesn't want her to be sad so he takes Louis to the Pet Sematary to bury the cat. He doesn't tell Louis what is going on and, in not doing so, he takes this news to his constantly crying wife. I don't know if I have mentioned this yet, but Rachel cries in every. single. scene. I don't know that she cracks a genuine smile once in the whole film. And I just want to add that when a character is sad the whole time you feel very little for them when something traumatic really does happen. There needs to be highs and lows in a characters emotions in order to connect with them, in my opinion. The news of the cat sends her over the edge and we finally get some back story on Rachel's sister Zelda, who has been teased throughout the first half of the film with pictures and super fast flashbacks. Through her sobs, she begs Louis to not say that the cat is dead, rather he has just run away. The next morning, they wake the daughter up and tell her that they had been looking all night but the cat was gone. Then we find out that* dun dun dun* that cat was here the whole time and was really ticked off. This was cool. If there was any saving grace in this movie it was Church. That cat was matted and scary. Just by looking you could tell that he stunk of the earth. It was really rad. And the story goes on as the Creeds tip toe around the cat. Life continues somewhat as normal. Until Louis finds a disturbing drawings by one of his children and yet again we run into another horror movie cliche. It looks like a man bleeding from his head...Pascow! He asks Ellie what was with the creepy drawing and she tells him that it wasn't her...it was Gage! So, in this rendition, Gage is the one who can see all this coming and I kind of dig the twist.
Before we move on to the most important seen in this movie, we need to talk about Zelda. Oh my. If I enjoyed anything about this movie other than the cat it was Zelda and her twisted spine. I really dug the makeup and fx applied to the actress playing her. However, I didn't like her back story. They did stick to her having Spinal Meningitis because, well there was no way around that but I don't like how they killed her. I suppose it was scarier to have Zelda fall down the dummy waiter because Rachel didn't want to go up and feed her, but there was something scarier in the original. Rachel feeding her sister and watching her choke to death while their parents weren't home. I don't know. Rachel feeling directly responsible for her sisters death really adds to the trauma because we learn that Rachel wanted her dead and she hated feeling that. You really didn't feel that in this one, but the scare was there and I appreciated the effort.
Back to where we were, after we learn that Gage is the clairvoyant we flash forward to Ellie's birthday and to the most impact-full and important part in any rendition of this story; the child's death. If you haven't picked up the twist then let me lay it down for you. With Gage being the messenger, if you will, that leaves Ellie to be the one to be buried in the Pet Sematary. She is hit by the truck and in this scene they built it up in a grand fashion, let me tell you. For all of us horror nerds (who didn't know before hand what the twist was) we were expecting to see Gage run out in front of the truck and boy did they tease that. We see Louis run after the baby and, totally unaware of his daughters whereabouts, she gets hit with the end side of the truck. The build up was great, even the aftermath was great...however, the emotion wasn't there for me. I suppose you could say I am nitpicking but it's not that at all. I will try to explain this the best I can. All of the characters in this movie were sad from the very beginning. There is very little happy family moments that we can watch and relate to. It is depressing. In the novel and original movie, there are moments of total and complete happiness, despite the events leading up to the death. In my mind, that's what makes the death even more gut wrenching. Knowing that not all that long ago there was a family who really loved one another, loved to laugh, play and were enjoying every moment of their beginning years together. You didn't get that many scenes of the family spending any time together before the death. In my opinion, you got the sense that the family was in jeopardy of falling apart from the very beginning.
So, Ellie is buried in the pet sematary, against Jud's warnings to Louis. That is before Louis drugs him and leaves his to burn by his fire. No jokes, this was good to me because this is how Louis silents Jud in the book. Louis digs up his daughter, takes her to beyond the pet sematary, and returns home to lay out some clothes for her, all the while avoiding direct contact with his wife who was away. When Ellie returns, she is a mess. Dirty, cut up, sagging face, she was scary. She even had a scary little voice that she used to ask her dad obvious questions. What I liked about her coming back is that she was aware that she was dead and she was not happy about it. I genuinely enjoyed this new aspect of the film. It added a new dimension to the story. Having her come back, as opposed to Gage, she was able to verbalize the pain and rage that goes on when someone is buried in the pet sematary. However, this is where the scares end for me. Following Ellie's rebirth (if you will) Rachel comes home to find her daughter alive and she is mortified. She doesn't even want to touch her daughter, believing that bringing her back to life is against nature and needs to be stopped. Just like in the novel, the child tortures her mother by using Zelda against her. In this new rendition, Ellie twists her mothers spine through a hallucination, making her believe that she has finally got her for letting her die. In an even more vile act against nature, child murders mother. Ellie kills her mother knowing that Louis is bound to bury her in the pet sematary, too. This really aggravated me, I'll have to say because after he did that, because we knew he was going to, Rachel comes back to life and kills him! Then the two evil ladies bury him and bring him back...ALL IN THE SAME NIGHT!!! I'll tell you why this bothers me and that is because in any version of the story it takes at least a whole night for the magic to work. Not an hour or a couple hours, a whole night. There is NO WAY that ALL THREE OF THEM would be able to bury one another and come back ALL IN ONE NIGHT! It defies the rules that were set in the beginning of the movie. Plus, how would the two dead people be strong enough to kill him and carry him up to the burial ground in one night if it took Louis that long to bury one of them? It makes no sense. Now, I bet you are wondering where Gage has been this whole time. Louis has locked the baby in the car while he attempts to handle his dead daughter and wife. After Louis comes back to life, the three of them and Church head back to the house and to where Gage is. Surrounding him like a zombie movie the movie ends on an open ended note. We can only assume that they kill Gage and bury him in the sematary, too. Who knows what they plan to do when they complete their zombie family. Maybe take over the town? The world? The possibilities are endless.
I was not happy with this ending. There was no lesson to be learned in this remake. No one survived, there was no actual range of emotion, there was substance to this classic story. I honestly felt like the remake was emotionless and unfulfilling. The only up sides were the imagery surrounding the dead cat, the fact that the dead could express themselves a little more fully, and Zelda. Everything else was uninspired and unoriginal. I was disappointed in the lack of Pascow, central message, and heart. I know that at the end of the day it is just a movie, but as a fan of the genre I couldn't help but be disappointed. I'm not saying that the original movie was Oscar worthy, but it did a better job of depicting evil corrupting the lives of a happy family, even if the actor who played Louis was really wooden. What did you think of this remake of the Stephen King classic? Feel free to let me know in the comments down below or on any of my social medias. I would love to see your thoughts. And with that, we are done. Until next time friends, stay spooky!
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