Summary
This new version of a Stephen King classic is a curious beast: genuinely frightening at times, filled with faithful moments from the book, while subverting expectations of the first adaptation.
Adaptations of Stephen King novels are a bit like the plot of PET SEMATARY. There are some that the horror master would probably rather remain dead and buried, while others have been cropping up like hordes of the undead. Yet it’s a golden age for Constant Readers right now, from It to TV’s Castle Rock. As Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer set out to prove, sometimes retread is better.
On paper the original text of Pet Sematary is unquestionably a horror story, and arguably one of King’s most unnerving. Indeed, in the introduction to the book the author regards it as “the most frightening book I’ve ever written” and initially ponders whether or not he had gone “too far.” Inspired partly by the death of his daughter’s cat, and “thinking the unthinkable” after a near-death miss with his youngest son, it is possibly one of the rawest pieces of fiction King had constructed at that prolific point in his career.
In screenwriter Jeff Buhler’s readaptation we are in familiar territory, at least on the surface. As doctor Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and children from Florida to the remote home in Ludlow, Maine. When tragedy strikes, the new neighbour Jud Crandall (Jon Lithgow) introduces Louis to the titular burial ground and leads them all down a dark path.
Buhler, Kölsch, and Widmyer take their own journey from here, reversing several key plot elements and somewhat playing on expectations founded in the book or the more faithful 1989 adaption from director Mary Lambert. There were always textual shadows of The Shining, for example, that are hard to…overlook (Sorry. I’m so sorry). Here, it’s almost as if the filmmakers wanted to make something akin to The Shining with a few of the Children of the Corn thrown in for good measure.
Which is the biggest departure: Buhler’s script leans into the Micmac/Native American elements King introduced in the novel. With the absence of Jud’s wife Norma, the avuncular charcter’s talk of wendigos and the unexplained children in animal masks are much more dominant in this version. They also inform a large chunk of cinematographer Laurie Rose’s impressively dark photography, not to mention the twisted brambles that loom large in the production design. Even in with these often dramatic departures, there’s still much to admire about the approach. This PET SEMATARY wants to do its own thing – and that’s just fine.
Clarke is an effective Louis, driven by his grief and something sinister under the surface. It is also a joy to see Seimetz given a version of Rachel that has a greater level of agency than the one in any previous version. Instead of being shafted off to Boston when it is narratively convenient, she is present throughout much of the dark exposition, changing the dynamic between the couple and allowing her to share in the grieving process.
This, more than anything, is what the new PET SEMATARY is all about. It’s a meditation on grief. It’s about a family dynamic shattered by something sinister. It’s about how that fear also infects everyday life. The cyclical nature of the narrative speaks to how non-linear this process is as well. There are jump scares, the undead, bloodletting, and creepy ass kids. There’s also the realisation that this life we live isn’t to be taken lightly, and that sometimes dead is better.
2019 | US | DIR: Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer | WRITER: Jeff Buhler (based on the novel by Stephen King) | CAST: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 4 April 2019 (AUS)
