Pet Sematary (2019)
Sometimes Dead Is Better
Cemetery: A place to put those to rest that have moved on. Sematary: a place to bring about the ritual apocalypse of the world, most assuredly a bad place to confuse with Cemetery. One might be confuse by tonight’s entry, thinking it the old super cheesy one that I may or may not have even already reviewed before and I wouldn’t blame you - the penchant for remakes to just reuse the title without so much a differentiating sub text can be quite confusing. Granted, After the reboot of It, I’m sure more people are receptive to the idea of King’s cinema graveyard getting second chances - even if some of us were okay with how schlocky and otherwise bad the original marathon of films came out. Either way, I’m interested in seeing if they changed anything for better or worse, and I’m dragging you all along with me. Check your brain matter at the door of grief, this barrelling truck of unobservant is heading straight for the Pet Sematary.
Let’s play the fun factoid game! Have I seen the original movie? Yes, relatively recently in fact. Have I read the story it was made from? Nah, better or worse and to nobody’s shock. So here’s the thing - I can’t tell you how good of an adaption it is, but I can tell you how good of a reboot it is. There’s some definite changes here - some more blatantly pointed-out by the camera as though to put it’s tongue in it’s cheek and go “fooled you!” Some work out rather well, changing things for the better - and some tip that grave marker over, like some punk kid that’s never going to amount to anything cause their just a bad seed. I’m unfortunately not going to be able to get into a lot of those little changes because of plot relevance, but on the whole outside of one exception I do feel the changes made the movie a much more enjoyable movie - but with that comes a lot of the (probably unintentional) humor being lost from that which came before, and as a whole not every person whose seen the first is going to think this one is the superior of the batch. For the benefits the changes bring about, also comes a bit of a side-line that degrades other aspects.
Now, what the movie does do right and I’d argue factually better is get the spooky scenery and mood. The movie feels quite a bit darker (as in lighting) than the previous, and where that really shines is in the exterior shots around the burial grounds and the like, where the darkness obscures just as much as the mist, providing for a right haunted house feel of creeping doom. The more normal set chunks are good for bringing you back into that real world, all whilst also bringing practically no attention to itself as standing out. It’s good to have that layer of believably when we might transition from an everyday bedroom interior into a dark and spooky woods though - even if on it’s own it might feel a bit lame or boring as far as set go in comparison to more elaborate or eye catching movies. The dead-grounds looks a bit more frightening this time around, lacking most the names of pets and exchanging it instead for pole-markers and dangling collars, giving it a familiar but also childish over-compensation of spook for a pet burial area. The mystery wood and swamp segments also look their parts of believable and yet spooky, despite their relative short runtime compared to the rest of the movie.
Despite the name being a place, the movie isn’t all about sets here. Yes, the main threat comes from a ancient burial ground of sour soil that brings things back touched by evil and a roadway of consistently speeding unobservant truckers, but if the actors deliveries were super cheesy it would still be rather hard to feel that amount of tensions or impact from either of those threats. Here, the actors pull of serious pretty good, delivering lines that most of the time aren’t laughable all while being able to throw in expressions that could tell you what’s going on without the use of a line delivery in the first place. Perhaps not the most immense level of acting, but it is more than adequate and keeps it’s overacting under the thumb - without making too many deliveries wooden or entertainment breaking. The kid actors aren’t exactly that modern bar set by things like Stranger Things, but it’s still pretty solidly better than what we got around the time period of the original. The youngest is probably the worst when it comes to the acting, but thankfully their probably too young to really grasp acting self doesn’t have an absolute smorgasbord of words to expunge upon us.
It all starts with a cemetery.
Although the acting itself isn’t that bad, some of the characters really haven’t gotten a large improvement over the years. The mother spends a good chunk of this movie stuck in PTSD mode and being either a scared or crying mess. The father character still makes incredibly stupid decisions to spur the final act even if he is suffering from grief - although the removal of the more blunt “don’t do that bro” ghost in the final act helps remove at least a little of the stupid from the actions for what it’s worth. The neighbor doesn’t have quite as entertaining an accent as in the original, but also largely functions in the exact same manner as he originally did. There isn’t a huge well of development here, although there are touches over here and over yonder that might be enough to at least pass it as not having all the characters feel totally one note - but don’t set the expectations high in regards to characters performing like totally intelligent entities in this one. The cat does a good job of being a cat though, which shouldn’t be too surprising given that it is a cat.
Effects work isn’t over the top here. There is some violent content, the most in-your-face of which is the ghost character, what with having a little bit of his brain visible after getting hit by a car. Most the rest is your classic stabbed bleeding shirts or bodies - nothing to over the top. There is a part or two that might make a person a bit squeemish just via it’s content, but this is leagues away from being the graphic content of a splatter film or zombie flick. You’ll see a few dead bodies, a dead animal, and a bunch of blood. Beyond that, we have some person mutation via the PTSD of the mom that looks good and fine, and some really nice transitions pertaining to just happening out into the woods. The ending ramps things up a bit more, but we won’t talk about that. What I will mention is that nothing ends up being so cheesy that it’s as unintentionally mood-breaking funny as a shoe flying off.
There was one musical moment where the movie sounded real close to Terminator that I appreciated, but otherwise it’s largely scoring for emotional and support effect here. Audio balance is... kind of good? I had a hard time hearing things a couple of times, but it never felt like anything was overpowering everything else unless it was a “jump scare” loud truck or something along those lines. I’ll chalk it up to my sound system for now, but it’s worth mentioning anyways. A few lines are a little bland on delivery, but mostly the actors do a good job adding some form of emotion to the lines. The sound department does do a good job adding to the atmosphere of things, particularly the spooky parts though.
Kitty kitty.
It’s still not the best movie out there, but I’d say it was an improvement over the first bearing it’s name. I enjoyed some of the changes they made, as it felt like intentional nods or corrections of what came before it, as though to imply they learned from the predecessors mistakes - even if the movie as a whole still didn’t skip over all the ruts. My biggest complain I could field is actually towards the ending, which I’ll just throw out as a simple “I didn’t like it” and then not talk about. The movie did a good job with atmosphere, and if you want a serious attempt at a spooky movie based on King’s work then this one isn’t bad (although I’d still probably recommend the reboot of It over this one for overall quality). The major downside to the modernizing and focus on actually being a spooky movie is that it no longer retains the charm of camp that the original one had - so if that’s the only reason you enjoyed the first, I wouldn’t go out and recommend this version. It’s an alright movie, and if you were to watch it I’d recommend it as a rental over a purchase for now - unless you find it in a five dollar bin or the likes, or this type of movie is your real bread and butter in which case the rental would still not be a terrible idea.