PET SEMATARY (2019) **

Guys, it’s my fault.  A few days ago, my VCR ate my copy of Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary.  I was heartbroken at the loss.  So, blinded by grief, I buried the tape in the rocky soil of the old Indian burial ground in my backyard.  I waited.  Eventually, it came back.  To theaters this time.  It looked like my old Pet Sematary.  It sounded like my Pet Sematary, but it wasn’t the same.  It was… bad.

In the beginning, this Pet Sematary gets you thinking everything is going to be just fine.  It lulls you into a false sense of security.  Then, from out of nowhere… WHAM!  It attacks you.  Why would my Pet Sematary do this to me?  How could it be so cruel and heartless?  

That’s because… IT’S NOT MY PET SEMATARY ANY MORE!!!

This Pet Sematary just tries too damn hard to be scary.  Take for example the funeral procession of kids in creepy animal masks.  Why are they there?  Ominous harbinger of doom?  Or just something the directors (Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team behind Starry Eyes) thought would look cool?  It just doesn’t work.  

They also go overboard with the Zelda and Victor Pascow scenes.  I get why they’re in the book as they offer us a glimpse into the psyche of Louis and Rachel (who in this version are played by Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz).  In this incarnation, both Zelda and Victor are gratuitous and only exist as over the top portents.  (Did we really need the scene at the clinic where Pascow’s brain pulsates out of his skull, and the nurse screams, “OH MY GOD!  I CAN SEE HIS BRAIN!”?)

As unnecessary as all this is, the first half of the movie is… okay.  It’s when the film deviates from the original (not to mention the book) in such a dramatic way that the wheels just don’t fall off, they spontaneously combust.  I know this isn’t the first remake to change something from the original.  Nor is it the first adaptation of a novel to stray from the source material.  It’s just that the changes (especially in the last ten minutes) are needless and clumsily executed.  

The big change, which won’t be much of a spoiler if you saw the trailers, is that it’s the Creeds’ eldest daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence) who gets hit by a truck and not the toddler Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavole).  I get the reasoning behind this.  A two-year-old zombie isn’t as emotionally complex as a nine-year-old.  (Besides, let’s face it, Ellie was the most annoying and extraneous character in the original.)  If handled just so, the change could’ve packed a real wallop, but like the zombie Ellie, it’s just plain no good.

I won’t lie.  There was a part of me that had a bit of a reaction to the big scene.  My daughter is the same age as Ellie.  We live by a heavily trafficked road that are full of speeding semis.  I imagine I would’ve done the same thing Louis does.  It’s a storytelling low blow to be sure, but the novel was like that too.  Like Gage says in the original, “No fair”.  

Jason Clarke does a fine job as Louis, the grieving father in the scenes leading up to and immediately after he digs up Ellie.  He has an appropriate emptiness in his eyes, like lights are on, but no one’s home.  There are two quiet scenes that work.  One, where he gives his freshly risen daughter a bath.  The other, when he tucks her into bed at night.  These little moments work remarkably well.  If the filmmakers explored this gray area further, it may have been brutally efficient, even scary.  

Instead, the next scene has Ellie dancing wildly around, growling, and smashing shit.  Before long, she’s donning one of those creepy masks and dispatching people with a scalpel while making lame wisecracks.  It’s pathetic.  

The final scenes will just leave fans of the book and the original film furious.  Those unfamiliar with the changes may be able to accept them at face value.  However, the final moments land in such a clunky manner that I severely doubt it.  

I was ecstatic about the casting of the great John Lithgow as the Creeds’ neighbor Jud, who was memorably played by Fred Gwynne in the original.  As a fan of Lithgow’s I couldn’t wait to see what he would do with the role.  As it turns out, John Lithgow is no Fred Gwynne.  Who’d thought?

Honestly, there’s no reason for this thing to even exist.  There are so many great Stephen King novels and short stories that haven’t been turned into movies yet.  Why dig up old ones and remake them?  Other than to get some of that It money. 

Sometimes, the original is better.