PET SEMATARY (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

PET SEMATARY (2019) movie

Genre              |   Horror Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   120 minutes

Released         |   4 April 2019

cast

Jason Clarke ... Louis Creed
Amy Seimetz ... Rachel Creed
John Lithgow ... Jud Crandall
Jeté Laurence ... Ellie Creed
​Hugo Lavoie ... Gage Creed

director

​Kevin Kölsch
Dennis Widmyer

writer

​Stephen King ... (novel)
David Kajganich ... (screenplay)
Jeff Buhler ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

Laurie Rose

music

Christopher Young ​

film editor

Sarah Broshar

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box office result

Worldwide               $​113,118,226

Australia                 $​2,272,728

North America        $​54,724,696

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movie minutiae

​​When Rachel is returning home from Boston, there is a highway sign that says "Derry 20 miles". Derry is a town that appears in numerous Stephen King stories, most prominently in "IT."

​Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura notes that Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer gave Stephen King an early heads-up on the big twist. "We wanted to see if he had any objections, and he was more than cool with it," said the producer. "In some ways it's true to the book because in the book the conversations about death are with Ellie. In that respect we're following the book. We call it wrapping it up in a black ribbon," said co-director Widmyer. "It is wrapped up, but not how you think it's going to be."

When Gage repeatedly says "Pascow" is very similar to how Danny Torrance says "Redrum" in THE SHINING (1980).

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PET SEMATARY (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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PET SEMATARY (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Dr. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, relocate from Boston to rural Maine with their two young children. The couple soon discover a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near their new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his neighbour Jud Crandall, setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unspeakable evil with horrific consequences.

PET SEMATARY (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 4 April 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

PET SEMATARY, the second feature film to be made from Stephen King’s 1983 novel, is a solid piece of movie-making, but, despite what the film’s pre-release press material suggests, this co-directed outing from Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer is not as terrifying nor innovative in its adaptation of the source material as it needs to be for contemporary audiences.

In the array of Stephen King literary feature film adaptations, this update of PET SEMATARY is not a bad effort...

The film has solid performances, is well staged and has pretty good production value...

The problem with this latest feature film version of PET SEMATARY (the first feature film was previously released back in 1989), as with so many King adaptations, lies in the adaptation of the novel’s sub-text.

There is so much going on “beneath the surface” of King’s 374 page novel that it’s simply impossible to translate everything into a feature film.

For those not familiar with the premise, Dr. Louis Creed, a gifted surgeon whose career has been spent dealing with all sorts of horrific human damage in the high-pressure Emergency Department of a Chicago Hospital, has moved to Ludlow, Maine for a quieter life to spend more time with his young family.

Creed’s wife, Racel (Amy Seimetz), is battling her own demons, haunted by a childhood trauma that sees herself constantly questioning her self-belief and, the further the film progresses, sanity. 

Louis and Rachel have two cute kids, Ellie (Jete Laurence) and Gage (played by twins Hugo & Lucas Lavoie). Anyone familiar with the novel and the 1989 film will recall that Gage is the victim in the horrific truck accident that sparks Louis into action in the novel.

The more time the Creed family spend at their new home, the more they become increasingly aware that all is not right in the wooded area immediately behind their idyllic farm house...

Matt Greenberg (screen story credit) and Jeff Buhler (screenplay credit) share the film’s writing credit, but with this new version, neither scribe has been able to entirely crack King’s unique prose. Instead, their most significant departure from the source material offers a “twist” as to WHO is the catalyst for Louis Creed to mess with the supernatural forces at play in the story. 

PET SEMATARY also offers up a revised ending, which is a logical extension of the novel, but diminishes the trauma the characters have endured throughout the film’s relatively brisk 101 minute running time.

Both Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz deliver solid performances.

Clarke is an interesting actor and, somewhat like Eric Bana, has forged a career playing leading roles as character actor, not as a “Star”. To explain, by comparison, when a Tom Cruise movie is released, the viewer knows that their getting two hours of “Tom Cruise”. It doesn’t really matter what the story is about, the movie is really about Cruise acting out all the things he does well.

Clarke is different…

For a start, he’s extremely low-key. There’s nothing “BIG” about his performances and, with such a style, the story remains focussed on narrative and plot, as opposed to servicing “Star” needs.

That’s why Clarke was so well suited to a genre film like DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014). He inhabits the screen as the character, not as “Jason Clarke” performing a character.

This style serves him well in his career, but it also helps PET SEMATARY because Horror films are not generally noted for their outstanding dramatic work. (The good news is that this “genre discrimination” is becoming less of an issue, but it still exists... How can Melissa McCarthy nab an 2019 Best Actress Oscar nomination for CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? And Toni Collette miss out for HEREDITARY? Not suggesting Clarke’s work on this film is award-worthy, but Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy seem to be under-represented in the critical recognition stakes.)

Amy Seimetz has some challenges with her material…

This new adaptation expands elements her character’s backstory from the novel to help provide context and justification for the ending the film chooses to employ.

In terms of distilling the novel’s material and focussing on the main characters, this makes perfect sense.

In King’s book, a lot more time is spent on the characters of Jud & Norma Crandall, the Creed’s neighbours.  In this new film, greater focus is placed on Rachel Creed and her backstory, at the expense of the Crandalls. Norma isn’t present in the film and Jud (John Lithgow) is a supporting presence without taking on the paternal role his character does in the novel.

Despite more attention paid to Rachel, the material never allows Seimetz to escape the uneasy inevitability that she’s going to become part of the film’s “Kill Count”. Seimetz holds the character together right up to the very end, but, in her final few minutes of screen time, Rachel unravels and becomes fait accompli to the film’s “new” ending.

John Lithgow fares a little better…

Despite the travesty of PITCH PERFECT 3 (2018), Lithgow is a super actor. (He’s also one of the few people in his profession who has anything remotely interesting to say about American politics and culture…)

With Jud, he delivers a grizzly, dishevelled performance that showcases the haunted effect the Ludlow  children’s “Pet Sematary” has upon the local inhabitants. 

The biggest missed opportunity of this new PET SEMATARY is that more time isn’t dedicated to the relationship between Louis and Jud.

Special mention must go to Leo, Tonic, Jager and JD.

Collectively, these four “performers” portrayed Church, the Creed’s pet cat.

Church goes from being a cute kitty to one seriously pissed-off resurrected feral feline!

PET SEMATARY is not the best Horror film ever made. It doesn’t redefine the genre, but it does what it needs to do in order to satisfy viewers. It’s obvious that other studios have finally started to pay attention to Jason Blum’s micro-budget Horror movies and James Wan’s Conjuring-connected universe franchise films.

There’s serious money to be made in Horror movies, but the stories have to be good. It makes sense to go to the material from one of the world’s most successful writers in Stephen King. Not only is he a best-selling author, the majority of his work has been in the Horror genre. Many have tried to replicate his style and content, but no one has come close to his success.

It’s not just the Horror itself…

King is a master of connected-universe storytelling and has been cross-pollinating material from one novel into another for years…

“If you want success, copy the best…”

The new PET SEMATARY is a solid effort, but lacks the level of inventiveness that more recent Horror films such as HEREDITARY (2018) have set as the benchmark for the genre.

Sometimes “dead” is not better, as long as it has little bit of thought put into it...

PET SEMATARY MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Pet Sematary (2019 film) - Wikipedia
Pet Sematary (2019) - IMDb​
​Pet Sematary (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

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