Pet Sematary (2019) is another Stephen King novel being adapted to film in the past few years. We had the remake of It in 2017, and then there were smaller adaptations that Netflix started making like 1922 and Gerald’s Game, and now we have the remake of Pet Sematary. Starring Jason Clarke and John Lithgow as the most notable actors.

Now I have seen the original Pet Sematary film when I was younger and I always thought that although the acting was kind of over the top and cheesy at some times, the imagery was absolutely chilling in that film. Fred Gwynne played the old man and don’t get me started on how creepy he was, his voice was eerie, and his face always looks like he has a shocked or afraid look on his face. His eyes are always wide and there was a shot in the film where he smiles is absolutely terrifying. Probably more terrifying than the plot of their dead child coming back and killing the family, but I digress. In this remake, the old man character is played by John Lithgow, who in my opinion isn’t anywhere near being as scary as Fred Gwynne. When I think of Lithgow I think of the preacher from Footloose who outlawed dancing, are you trying to tell me that man is scary?! No way.

Anyways, Jud Crandall(John Lithgow) befriends Louis Creed’s family(played by Jason Clarke) and after their beloved cat named church gets hit by a truck, Jud takes Louis to an Indian burial ground not too far from their houses in the woods, a burial ground that brought whatever was buried in it back to life. Only when they came back they would be different, they would be evil. They bury the cat and it comes back… different. Then another family accident occurs sending Louis Creed to make some bad choices to try and bring back someone who would make their family whole again.

Now, as I said before I have seen the original movie, and I have read the novel. The novel is actually probably scarier than the original film. If I’m going to be honest, it’s definitely scarier than this new remake. Pet Sematary(2019) retreads the same old story as the original film, and adds some minor differences to set itself apart a little bit from the original, yet it can’t escape the fact that it’s the same movie really, just not as scary. This film had so much potential to be as scary as the source material that Stephen King created. The original film was not as scary as the original, so this remake had the potential to make itself seem like it’s worthwhile to even be made. However, the filmmakers took a more modern approach with the story and the scares that kind of disappointed me. Speaking of scares, a lot of them are taken right from the original film, with not much of an attempt to make them unique or scarier than what the original was. I’ll say one of the positives about this remake is that the acting is far better than the acting that was in the original film. Minus Fred Gwynne, who was the best actor in the original. Unfortunately, this film fell apart in trying to take the classic story of the novel and make something unique and fresh out of it. The film instead adopts the popular trend in horror films today of many jumpscares that don’t really amount to much or keep the audience’s on edge the whole time.

This isn’t a necessarily bad film, it definitely brought more aspects of the novel than the original film did, and the budget for this film was obviously much higher than the original, so the effects and overall production value is much higher on this one, but it falls apart in trying to provide an interesting take on this classic horror novel.

I am going to give Pet Sematary (2019) 2 out of 5 claps.