Quote from Pet Sematary by Louis Creed
“A place to bury our pets and remember them. I know it seems scary, but it’s not. Perfectly natural, just like dying is natural.”
There are not major spoilers in this review!
Sometimes Once is Enough
Pet Sematary is a remake of the original movie released in 1989 that was written by Stephen King and directed by Mary Lambert. I preferred this one so much better for several reasons. The first was the casting choices. Dale Midkiff playing a tortured father of Louis Creed interacting with Fred Gwynne as the semi-friendly neighbor of Jud Crandall was a good exchange. Denise Crosby’s as Rachel Creed and Miko Hughes as Gage Creed had all the creepiness you would expect. The second was how the characters’ personalities. For all the admiration I have of John Lithgow, his portrayal of Jud Crandall was more bitter than discerning grandfather. The emotions of Jason Clarke as Louis Creed fell flat and Jeté Laurence as Ellie Creed’s performance didn’t have the same effect because she was older. I’ll leave the rest for my evaluation at the end.
Bad Things Happen in Small Town USA
Pet Sematary is a horror, mystery, thriller movie with a running time of one hour and 41 minutes. The MPAA rating is R for horror violence, bloody images, and some language. The screenplay is written by Matt Greenberg and Jeff Buhler and adapted from Stephen King’s novel and the movie is directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. The cast include Jason Clarke as Dr. Louis Creed, Amy Seimetz as Rachel Creed, Sonia Maria Chirila as Young Rachel, John Lithgow as Jud Crandall, Jeté Laurence as Ellie Creed, Hugo & Lucas Lavoie as Gage Creed, Obssa Ahmed as Victor Pascow, Alyssa Brooke Levine as Zelda Goldman, Suzy Stingl as Norma Crandall, Maria Herrera as Marcela, Jacob Lemieux as “Mouse Face,” Maverick Fortin as “Dog Face,” Lou Ferrando as “Rabbit Face,” Najya Muipatayi as “Cat Face,” Emma Hill as “Horse Face,” and Leo, Tonic, Jager, and JD as Church the Cat. This Di Bonaventura Pictures and Paramount Pictures production is basically about when good intentions go bad in small town U.S.A.
Pet Sematary’s Trailer
Short Synopis of Pet Sematary
Pet Sematary begins with Dr. Louis Creed who moves from big city to a small town in Maine. In Ludlow, he settles into a spacious house with his wife and two children. He works in a university hospital and after failing save a student named Victor Pascow, he starts to have nightmares about it. October is fast approaching and changes have occurred. The family cat is no longer friendly and the Creed family reacts to in different ways. Whether haunted by past incidents or present tragedies, as head of the family Louis Creed finds himself having to make decisions despite the advice of Jud Crandall. The people intimately involved with Pet Sematary, that being Louis, Jud, and Ellie, are set on a collision course among each other. Rachel is still at her parents’ house dealing with the nightmares of her sister. When she returns to Ludlow, it signals a new beginning for both her and Louis. There are two endings to the movie and the one chosen was the better of the two. Although I did like the closing scene in the alternate ending as it is the more disturbing of the two.
Evaluation of Pet Sematary
I knew from the beginning Pet Sematary wasn’t going to be a great movie, but this remake fell far from the mark of being a solid good movie. I commented a little about my preference for the original, but I will give this version credit of expanding and making it different. I just wish Ellie had less freakish strength in a particular scene. It was hokey and unbelievable. You can have a mean character in any story, but it begs the question of why Louis would hang out more than once with such a grumpy old fart that stayed grumpy throughout the movie. I wouldn’t have invited Jud to my child’s birthday party or invited him over for a beer. There’s a way to warn someone without sounding like a know it all. There were two versions of the end scene. The version included in the movie was the one I preferred although the end scene in the alternative one was more disturbing. For everything Ellie was, I would’ve changed her outcome so with this in mind this movie fell into the territory between bad and good. Since I didn’t account for this rating, it’s either a high bad or low good at 70.5% (hypothetically speaking). Going off my rating sheet, I would rate it 71% to put a positive spin on it.
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