Pet Sematary (2019) – a review

The Creed family moves to the countryside to start a calmer, peaceful life. But when tragedy strikes and death knocks his bony knuckles at their door, their life takes a turn to the grave.

Sometimes a remake is better than the original. Sometimes it’s lesser. With 2019’s Pet Sematary it’s the latter.
To me this is symbolized by the credits-song. A half-hearted cover of the ‘Pet Sematary’ song sung by Starcrawler. This version doesn’t have the bravour and enjoyment the original song has and, unfortunately, the same goes for the movie.

I’m not saying that the movie is terribly bad, it’s actually rather good for an entry in the ‘creepy kid’ sub-genre of horrors. But, one can’t help but compare and, by doing so, seeing that not all things changed for the better.

The cat
It’s not good to compare an original and the remake. A movie should stand on its own two feet and be judged as such. This is true.

And I can tell you that on its own Pet Sematary is a good horror movie. There are some nice shots of the woods; a fun little dance-routine (really) and the sets and make-up are spectacular.

I even believe there is a drone shot in there as well.

How far we’ve come from Kubrick’s clearly visible helicopter at the beginning of The Shining (1981).

However, there are also some mistakes; like trying to build tension during the daytime in a fully lit house. Masked kids plot-points that come by one moment and then are fully forgotten for the rest of the movie. Or monsters that can, apparently feel pain and fear. It’s the humanity that this movie is banking on in the last act that doesn’t work for me.

Intermezzo: Trailers and buzz
Around two weeks before a movie comes out there is a press-screening. All these viewers (naturally) have twitter. So, around that time the buzz starts. People who’ve seen the movie will go on their twitter account and tell the world how much they liked it (or how special they are for seeing a movie before anybody else does – one never really knows with ‘social’ media).

Movie websites collect these messages for us to read. However, one thing always strikes me: it’s always positive. And with positive I mean like ‘Leonardo DaVinci came to us in a time-machine and painted another Mona Lisa’-positive.
Regardless of the movie (it happened with Terminator: Genesys) the buzz will always be positive.
So, to me, whenever I catch an article on one of my movie sites that collected all these twitter-posts I become wary. My reaction, thus, is the opposite of what is intended. It’s like the ghost of Pascow warning me in advance.

Trailers
What do you show in a trailer? Do you show everything (Dream House -2011) or nothing (Psycho -1960). With Pet Sematary someone decided to take the exact same route that happened to the Carrie (2013) remake a few years back: ‘let’s just assume everybody has seen the original and so we’ll show you everything’.
It didn’t work for that movie and it certainly doesn’t help with Pet Sematary.

And to delve slightly into spoiler territory here (though, as I said, it is in the trailer) I’m not talking about the whole switcheroo. I’m actually talking about the fact that the trailer specifically shows when and where Jud dies. So, seeing the movie, his manoeuvring through the house looking for the aggressor wasn’t scary for one bit because I already knew exactly when and where Judd was going to die.
It’s like seeing a scary movie the second time, it’s not that scary anymore.

The child
One shouldn’t compare two movies. But compare one does.

I’m not comparing to the book because I actually never read it.

I did see the original adaptation and the documentary about that movie (Unearthed and Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017)).

What this new version of Pet Sematary does really well is bring logic into the movie. Jud’s reasoning for helping Louis  is logical when you think about it. Not all old grey-bearded men are wise. The same goes for Rachel’s fear of death which she actually accepts as irrational. The original character was a bit more unstable about it all.

This version is also a lot more streamlined that the one before it. Wherein the original Pascow, to me, pretty much died on the first day of the doctor’s new job. Here the movie gives the Louis-character time to settle in and meet his colleagues.

Not enough time to build a fence in front of the house though...

Which is exactly one of the many things changed from the original that just doesn’t work in this movie. True, no moviemaker could recreate the Zelda-character better than she was in 1989. But, then again, it isn’t wise to underplay the character as she is now.

Also it feels like this movie increased the amount of jump-scares over the original. Never a good sign.

The same goes for the sick relationship between Louis and his father in law. There is none in this version. Yet it was one of the strengths behind the original. Louis didn’t join his wife at her parents because he knew he would end up in a fistfight with his father-in-law; who is, in fact, quite the bastard when you think about it: you do not let a nine-year-old-girl take care of her dying sister while you go out clubbing.
And then there’s the spoiler:

The reason why this movie switched the children around is understandable when you see the ending.
An ending that, I think, doesn’t really have much of a reason for being there.

I would argue that this strange ending actually destroys some of the underlying themes of the story (e.g. ‘ignoring good advice’, ‘overcoming grief’, ‘making the same mistakes over and over again’)
But having an older child as the aggressor means you can talk to it. Plus she’s capable of doing a lot more horrendous stuff.

I remember learning about the moviemakers of the original coercing Milo Hughes into some kind of playtime that involved eating Fred Gwynne’s neck.

Yet (and this is the point) she doesn’t. What extra layer does the movie receive because Louis can talk to the creature the daughter has become? Nothing much.

In the original the toddler boy started to kill. The boy didn’t truly have a lot of a moral compass yet so he actually became quite the effective killing-machine.
Now you can talk to the ‘killing machine’ but instead of some Wendigo story-line or a deeper unravelling of the family dynamic it ends up with the daughter killing: just because.

The dead
Still, the cast give this movie their best turn. Again John Lithgow is the one to look out for as he can capture a character’s lifetime in a single wink. But all are well cast and more than capable of their job.

The toddler, obviously, looks directly at the camera at times but who can blame the kid.

It is more the setting that makes this movie stand out over the previous version. Advanced effects (the smoke-machine was working overtime), newer make-up techniques and some CGI tomfoolery manages to update the sordid tales of the Creeds’ to 2019.

Still, in the end, it is a remake that doesn’t feel needed. It’s a good movie on its own. But the second you start to think back at the original this new version unravels.