Pet Sematary **** (2019, Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence) – Movie Review

Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s reworking of the Stephen King novel and 1989 movie Pet Sematary is a surprisingly effective and classy horror movie. All about death, it is really dark, morbid and nasty, definitely creepy and scary, very twisted, and actually a little bit sick. Kölsch and Widmyer keep it tense, twisty, unsettling and involving.

There are basically only four roles – Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz star as Dr Louis Creed and his wife Rachel, Jeté Laurence plays their nine-year-old daughter Ellie and John Lithgow plays their creepy old new neighbour Jud [Judson Crandall], who welcomes them to their new rural home, befriends the little girl, and enlightens the family about the eerie Pet Sematary located nearby.

Arguably, the Creeds’ young son Gage provides a fifth role (for Hugo Lavoie and Lucas Lavoie), accident victim Victor Pascow a sixth for Obssa Ahmed, and then there’s the cat – Church – who has a very substantial role in proceedings, and is played variously by Leo, Tonic, Jager and JD. Four cat actors. What can I say? Pussy galore! That darned cat is quite a star.

[Spoiler alert] Here there be spoilers but not too many. There are so many plot twists and turns that it would be hard for even the trailer to spoil it. And, lo, it did not, unlike the trailer for Jordan Peele’s Us.

[Spoiler alert] The plot kicks in when Ellie’s beloved cat is killed by a truck, and Louis resorts to burying it in the mysterious pet cemetery, sorry Pet Sematary, prompted by old Jud’s mumblings and mutterings through his snow-white beard. Beyond the Pet Sematary lies an Indian burial ground, apparently, and the film accesses the old Wendigo thing.

Jeff Buhler writes the new screenplay, based on a screen story by Matt Greenberg. They have done a very good job sprucing up, and spicing up the old material. It never once flags or runs out of inspiration, and provides plenty of shocks and scares along the way to a really chilling climax. It  is not self-consciously posh and important as the recent Us, but in many ways it is as good, and as effective.

Clarke, Seimetz and Lithgow go at it with a will and a way, adding the touch of class it needs, acting like they mean it. It always pays to cast proper actors, not pretty leads, and here they are. The film has no youth appeal, with its middle-ageing, death-haunted couple, and creepy little girl. (Did I mention what a grand job little Jeté Laurence does, going rogue really scarily?) It is a family film, but the reverse of how Disney would see it. The film even has a little parental lecture about death and the afterlife, and what to tell the kids. Well, that’s nice and grown-up, isn’t it?

[Spoiler alert] The doc is a man of science, an unbeliever, his wife, who has lost her sister in grisly Stephen King-style circumstances for which she feels responsible, believes in heaven and all that. Jud is also haunted by the death of his wife. They are all to be brought down. It turns out there is an afterlife, but it isn’t the heaven the mother has promised her daughter. The little girl eventually reports back, it is hell!

I read somewhere someone saying this film is so bad that they wanted to give up going to the movies. I really just don’t get it. It reminded me of The Shining, maybe not quite as good, but nearly.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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