Pet Sematary (2019) Review

"Sometimes, dead is better."

-Jud Crandell

Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) and his family move to Ludlow, Maine, where they live next to a busy road.  Soon after, their pet cat, Church, is hit and killed by a truck.  Louis' neighbor, Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), takes Louis to an ancient Micmac burial ground to bury Church and, the next day, the cat is back, but different.  Soon, Louis learns the hard way that sometimes, dead is better...

Does this summary seem familiar?  That's because I copied and pasted it from my original Pet Sematary review.  The vast majority of this film is exactly the same as the original and it doesn't do anything different until the last third of the film.  I will have to spoil this film below, but it's a pretty meh film.  Everything in this movie is done better in the original, so just go watch that instead.

What Works:

There are a few creepy moments in this film.  Most of them have to do with the character of Zelda (Alyssa Brooke Levine), who was also the scariest part of the original film.  She's definitely creepy, but still not as good as the original Zelda.

The gore is moistly CGI, but early in the film we see a victim of a car accident and the gore is excellent here.  Just like in the original film, we see brain, which is always fun.

My biggest problem with the original film is Jud's motivation for bringing Louis to the burial ground in the first place felt really weak.  I felt the same way with the remake, but later Jud does a much better job at explain his motivation.  So I guess this movie does one thing better than the original.

Finally, this film makes a couple of changes from the original film that regained my interest.  First off, Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie) is not the one hit by the truck.  Instead, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) is the victim.  When she is brought back from the dead, we get to spend more time with her interacting with her family than in the first film, which was an interesting choice, but I ultimately preferred the events of the original film.  At least they did something different.

What Sucks:

Both versions of Pet Sematary are not afraid to go to dark places, which I appreciate, but the original is much more effective in handling the death of Louis' child.  It's a simpler sequence in the original, but it works much better.

As much as I love John Lithgow, he doesn't hold a candle to Fred Gwynne.  Lithgow doesn't even attempt the Maine accent, which is what made Gwynne's performance so fun.  I don't want to say Lithgow phoned in his performance, but he isn't very memorable.

Dale Midkiff played Louis in the original film and did a much better job than Jason Clarke at portraying the grieving and unhinged father.  While it is interesting that we get to see Clarke start to regret his choices much earlier, I think Midkiff did better in the role.

The vast majority of the gore is CGI and doesn't look great.  That's always disappointing.

Jeté Laurence isn't very good when she is delivering her lines as the resurrected Ellie.  She has the creepy look down, but the menacing role just isn't convincing with Laurence's voice.  It really took me out of the film.

Finally, I don't love that they removed the humor from Victor's (Obssa Ahmed) role.  His character in the original is pretty surreal and surprisingly funny.  He adds some lightness to an otherwise extremely dark film.  There is nothing to lighten the mood here and Victor is extremely forgettable.

Verdict:

I don't like bringing up the original Pet Sematary so much, but this film does a lot of the same things, but in a worse way.  And the things this film does differently still aren't great.  There are some good parts; creepy moments, one scene of excellent gore, and a better motivation for Jud, but the original is superior in nearly every way.  I was skeptical of this movie and I didn't think it needed to be made and I maintain that position after seeing it.  Just go watch the original.

 5/10: Meh