Pet Sematary

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Love it or hate it, 'It' was a huge success, and it kinda started to set the path for new remakes of old Stephen King adaptations. Next in line is 'Pet Sematary'.

It's pretty much the same overall deal as the original, if you're familiar, but replace Gage with Ellie, and show a few more gruesome things for horrific content. More on that later. If you're NOT familiar with the story, here's a rough breakdown.

Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves to Lulow, Miane from Boston, Massachusetts with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and two kids, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo Lavoie). The family cat, "Church" also comes with. That bit's important. Anyway, one day, Ellie goes off into the woods to wander and stumbles on a funeral procession. She later finds out there's a pet cemetery when she runs into their neighbor, Judd (John Lithgow).

Anyway, potential spoilers, but tragedy strikes when Church is run over by a speeding transport truck. Judd offers a solution to Louis that can bring the cat back from the dead to be with Ellie (as it seems to mostly be her cat), but with the risk of drastic change in the cat's personality. For those who know the story, it extends from there, without giving too much away, with the thought that maybe we can do the same with humans. But then again, the trailer kinda shows us everything we need to know. I honestly don't know where the "spoiler" line is drawn with this story, so fair warning on more potential spoilers ahead.

All in all, this pretty much copies and pastes the original, but with the change in roles between Ellie and Gage (as mentioned before). That said, I personally wonder if it was for the better. In the original, Gage is mostly done with a doll or kinda weak practical effects. Still a lot of fun to watch, but it's not altogether creepy (at least not anymore). Now as far as Ellie goes, I have to give it up to Jeté Laurence's performance. She's a little older so more of a dramatic act can come from her, and she turns out to be just the right amount of perfectly creepy. To me, this is her movie.

As far as the other performances go, everyone's decent, but no one really blows me away. Other criticisms go to the abundance of Zelda scenes (Rache's sister, who's death haunts her) which give Rachel a reason to be uncomfortable, but here it's kinda drilled into the ground and takes away from the main plot. It's damn near 50/50 with it here, whereas in the original, it's just a quick back story.

One thing to really appreciate about this film, however, is the atmosphere it provides. It's just downright spooky, and kinda reminds you of something meant for Halloween - especially when they head off into the outskirts of Pet Cemetery where the native burial ground is. So I guess for everything bad there seems to be something to enjoy.

Personally speaking, I have to say that I enjoyed the original better, but perhaps for the wrong reasons - it's just classic material at this point, and a lot of fun to watch as a sort of spookhouse movie. This was probably far creepier altogether, so works better as an all around horror movie. But not everyone will enjoy this for the same reasons I did. I'd almost fully recommend watching both back to back and seeing which one you prefer. But of course, if you've read and enjoyed the book, you might wanna stick to that version altogether.

3/5

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