Pet Sematary (2019)

Directed by: Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer | 101 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed, Alyssa Brooke Levine, Maria Herrera, Frank Schorpion, Linda E. Smith, Sonia Maria Chirila, Naomi Frenette, Suzi Stingl, Kelly Lee , Nina Lauren

‘Carrie’, ‘The Shining’, ‘Misery’: you must have lived under a very heavy rock to never have seen a Stephen King film adaptation. In recent years, the work of the most successful horror author of all time seems to be on the rise, with the biggest hit being the clownish remake of ‘It’ in 2017. It is therefore not surprising that another well-known work by King thirty years after the first film adaptation is also being revived. After all, many younger viewers will not have seen the earlier film adaptation of ‘Pet Sematary’. But will the horror enthusiast with a longing for depth also enjoy this umpteenth King adaptation?

Louis (Jason Clarke) and Rachel (Amy Seimetz) decide to leave their safe life in Boston with their two young children and move into a huge villa in a remote forest. During a walk through the woods, the daughter soon stumbles upon an obscure animal cemetery. Neighbor Jud (John Lithgow, quite recently Winston Churchill in ‘The Crown’) points out that this is according to traditional local custom. It is the first indication that little will come of that quiet life in the woods, especially because the trucks on the road next to the house are racing past at high speed: so thick that it has to become a recurring plot element.

Sure enough, all hell breaks loose when the daughter’s cat is found dead by the side of the road. Louis wants to bury the cat in the animal cemetery, but Jud takes him – of course in the middle of the night and surrounded by thunder, lightning and fog – to another secluded cemetery. If the cat appears to be in perfect health the next day, it turns out (surprisely) that much more is going on, especially if the cat starts behaving more and more aggressively and strangely. The tagline of the film is therefore: ‘Sometimes dead is better’. If only the characters knew that.

Stephen King has undeniably had a lot of influence on the horror genre as an author, but there is always the problem with the King films that the films never want to be really scary or oppressive. It always produces entertaining horror, but never uplifting. The only real exception to this is without a doubt ‘The Shining’ by Stanley Kubrick, which is typically a film adaptation that King himself fell head over heels for.

It is also the main shortcoming that ‘Pet Sematary’ has to deal with. The cast is excellent with always reliable names such as Clarke and Lithgow and the decoration convincing enough. It is mainly the script that has serious flaws in ‘Pet Sematary’. The first extremely rational doctor, who does not believe in any form of supernatural interference, makes one stupid decision after another in the second half of the film. This cover must probably be justified by a traumatic death, but the intellectual breakdown of this character is very abrupt. Other plot points such as a deceased patient and a traumatic experience of Rachel (ha-llo jumpscares) more than once feel forced and written. It is in any case the biggest shortcoming of the film: a little explanation is fine, but to provide each plot point with an explanation that has been taken care of down to the last detail is going a bit far.

But maybe it’s silly to get into internal logic here. As an average horror film, ‘Pet Sematary’ works fine. It is hard to find deeper layers or cohesion, but the film will effortlessly come close to monster hit ‘It’ in terms of visitor numbers. ‘Pet Sematary’ is above all an old-fashioned effective trip to a Kingsian haunted house: nice and scary, but little more than that.