Pet Sematary was okay for horror fans, irritating for fans of the original, and infuriating for fans of spelling. It is yet another horror movie spawned from the twisted mind of Stephen King. And a remake of a 1989 movie that already adapted this book.
Why The Hell Are There Remakes?
A long time ago (11 years really, which is 77 dog years and about a million internet years) there was a webseries on YouTube where two brothers would sit in front of a green screen and quickly spoil the end of “100 [or so] movies, in one take [after some bloopers of course], in under 5 [or so] minutes, starting now.” I really loved the quick wit and returning bits that The Fine Brothers incorporated in these videos. Also, yes, those Fine Brothers were making some of my favorite videos before their empire got too big for their own good. Anyway, one of those recurring gags would be spoiling a movie, then spoiling the remake with the same spoiler, and following with…
Seriously, if you enjoy movies (which I know is a big ask of someone reading a movie review on a movie opinion website) check out some of those early Fine Bros vids. They’re pretty fun.
Okay, But Why Are There Remakes?
The Fine Bros keyed in on a simple and repeatable joke that I could look forward to in every spoiler video. A lot of Movie YouTube actually relies more on making the same jokes over and over rather than saying something new about a new movie. You might say it’s everything that’s wrong with modern critique. *ding*.
But. Before you repeat a joke ad nauseam it might have been funny or relevant, and The Fine Bros asked a great question. Why are there remakes?
And the horror world has a lot of answers.
Maybe it was a filmmaker looking to cut his teeth on a classic. Or the original didn’t have the budget or release it’s fans deserved. Or cynically, the franchise just has more money to be squeezed from it’s cold. Dead. Zombie. Hands. Er, claws.
Ideally you should either be remaking something 1.) with room for improvement or 2.) expanding a world that fans are interested in.
So should Hollywood have been looking at Pet Sematary?
Yes.
Pet Sematary (1989)
Stephen King adaptations of the 80’s had a certain…TV quality to them. Children of the Corn, Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, all felt a little less than movies, culminating in 1990’s television adaptation of It that had clear potential but a lack of professional grade visual effects and professional acting. Then the 90’s found acclaim in Misery, Shawshank, and Green Mile, before the 2000’s swung back to low budget bad horror (albeit more palatable than 80’s bad horror). Now the 2010’s are concluding as the decade of remakes and revisits with a new Carrie, Pet Sematary, two chapters of It and the upcoming Doctor Sleep revisiting The Shining.
Sorry, this should be about Pet Sematary eventually. It’s just. Patterns!
The ’89 Pet Sematary was bad. There were a couple of scares, and it is a must watch for weird Stephen King fetish horror fans, but it is not a good movie to sit down and watch. The acting is stiff. The plot falls apart at the end. The motivations are hysterical.
Herman Munster makes it all okay, and it’s the only other thing I’ve seen Tasha Yar in, so it has that.
But think of it. A big city family moves to a quiet country farm house off the highway that has a local pet cemetary in the backyard that can bring animals (and maybe more than animals) back to life.
There was something there.
Pet Sematary (2019)
So check that first box, you can improve on a weak property. There’s also an audience out there for anything Stephen King. Check box two. All they had to do was make a good movie.
And that’s where it all falls apart.
We get to know the family a little better in this iteration. John Lithgow steps into the most interesting role in the story and provides an entertaining take. We get an American Werewolf in London type un-dead character to chat with the main protagonist. There are good things.
But the bad things overwhelm and remind you that it is a remake.
Why Change? *Spoiler.* Because They Can.
It’s hard to spoil a story that is based on a book, remade from a 20-year-old movie. It’s harder when the promotion and trailer for the movie itself try so hard to spoil it. But here is your spoiler warning. Enjoy this cat gif while you wait, and skip down to the next cat gif for safety.
I avoid trailers in general these days, and this is a movie where I’m glad I did. The story goes, after testing the Pet Sematary’s powers on a dead cat (hence the cat gif) a distraught father turns to the unholy ground to bring his young son back to life after an accident on the highway. In the remake though, the son is about to die when the daughter saves him, only to die herself.
The biggest jump scare in the original is where the kind neighbor is exploring a room and the undead boy slices his Achilles from under a bed. In the remake, the neighbor is exploring a similar room with the camera and general horror movie language telling everyone something is under the bed. But then there isn’t. Then the undead girl slices his Achilles from the stairs.
Worse than an uninspired rehash, this movie draws tension exclusively from zigging where the original zagged. And they do it with such obvious tension that even someone unfamiliar with the 1989 movie could tell what was supposed to happen, only to watch the opposite on screen.
A horror movie needs natural horror. Suspense derived from what you have set up within the walls of your run-time and not from knowledge of source material or an audience’s understanding of horror cliches.
Remakes Aren’t Over
Pet Sematary (2019) was bad news for remakes, but the good* news is, we’re not done with remakes!
*sarcasm.
Yeah, everything is a remix now and horror movies are still at the forefront. There’s another Addams Family on it’s way later this year, Black Christmas is getting a 2019 spin, and The Grudge is coming back to theaters in the beginning of 2020.
Pet Sematary was a bad remake despite starting from such a solid place, but just judging it as a new movie on it’s own, it is still just another uninspired horror movie. Genre fans, feel free to check it out, but it’s not doing anything new.
InQua loves horror movies. Well, at least one of our reviewers does. Check out some other chilling reviews while you’re here.