Film: Pet Sematary
Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence
Director: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Review: Klep Napier
Rating: 2.5X’s out of 5X’s
“Sometimes dead is better”, and sometimes you need to leave stories form the past locked in the vault. Here lies another Stephen King classic remade for today’s generation. Pet Sematary follows a family that moves from the city of Boston to a more rural town in Massachusetts to get away and “slow down” as they so mention. Everything seems quite normal until they realize that the land their new home sits on is also a place where some lay their deceased pets to rest. We won’t spoil things from here on out. Any known plot points beyond that are for the folks who are strongly attached to the original film. The wins in this film are simple. It does creepy well and even sets us up for the ride. With character building that for the most part will leave you caring about the characters. What makes this film lose is it's inability to out do its predecessor. You’re getting the exact same film as the original with twists that are clearly only used to throw off the folks who are attached to original. So it's down right predictable at every turn. For example, and again no spoilers, but we all know the original family to have only one child but for some reason the new film feels that it’s necessary for the family to have two. Guess this is supposed to throw audiences off of what’s to come once an unspeakable tragedy, which sets the story up, actually hits. We saw that coming a mile away. What it really tells us is that this movie never needed to happen. If you're going to change or add characters, and add or make changes to the overall plot points, then why not just make totally different movie? This remake is in my opinion unnecessary. Hate to be so frank because we really wanted to love it. Some things just work better in the late 80’s, early 90’s and should stay there. Real horror fans will watch just to watch. Real Pet Sematary fans will straight loath this movie, but for those who just came out for a scary date night, who have no recollection of the original films well, they may just hate it or accept it. There is no in between with this one sorry folks.