A touching remake of Stephen King’s story
Grief is a powerful emotion. The cruelest aspect of our evolution is the knowledge of the difference between life and death. Animals are instinctual—they protect themselves from harm and avoid death whenever possible, but they have no real understanding of the finality of it.
Some of the higher order animals, like apes, or those domesticated by humans, such as dogs, can display behaviors that look a lot like grief, but humans are unique in their ability to fixate on loss. Death seems mysterious because our brains cannot instinctively accept the reality of non-existence.
In short, we’re too egocentric to believe that death is an end. There must be something else because we’re here now. Why wouldn’t we be tomorrow? Religion may act as a guidebook for how to live life, but its real purpose is to help us rationalize what comes next. It helps with grief because most religions indicate that we will one day see our loved ones again.
So it would follow that those without a belief system would struggle much more with the finality of death. Doctor Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) is one of those people. He struggles with grief in a capable remake of the 1989 film Pet Sematary, which was, of course, based on the 1983 novel by Stephen King.
Pet Sematary is something of a retelling of many different stories. You might remember “The Monkey’s Paw”, for instance, a story from 1902 that was about a wish-giving charm that brought about terrible consequences. Pet Sematary is similar.
Dr. Creed, a former E.R. doctor, has moved his family to Maine to take a job as a campus physician for a local college. The family is attempting to get away from a difficult life in Boston. Louis, specifically, wants to remove himself from the horrors that can be found in emergency medicine. He has a wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), two young children, Ellie and Gage, and a cat named Church.
Rachel has struggles of her own, having suffered a significant childhood trauma at the hands of a deformed and sick sister. She is haunted by her untimely death and wants to escape Boston and start over. They settle on a nice piece of property with ample woods, some of which are occupied by an old pet cemetery for the community.
Gradually, however, Louis learns of an older ground behind the cemetery, a dangerous one. This ground is bad. His neighbor, Jud (John Lithgow), shows it to Louis after Ellie’s cat is found dead on the side of the road. He shows him how to bury the animal and Louis is shocked to learn that the ground causes the cat to come back. But, as Jud tells him, they never come back the same.
One of the best aspects of the film is the pacing. The movie clocks in at just over an hour and half and the story never once lags. There is a tendency for many films now to linger on, for reasons known only to the director. But directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer know how to move through the story in the most effective way.
Granted, this could be because I’m so familiar with the original film and story, but the film goes to great lengths to give each character an arc without excessive exposition. The film layers each horror and allows the audience to identify with them through tight characterization.
In particular, Rachel’s guilt over her perceived childhood sin informs her relationship with her daughter, while her approach to grief contrasts with that of Louis. Louis, having never believed in an afterlife, is unable to see the danger hidden in the ground behind his house, while Rachel knows that sometimes true horror lingers on.
There isn’t much that can be improved on in Pet Sematary. It’s expertly written and directed. The film breaks no new ground, but as a remake it may surpass the original in terms of quality. Pet Sematary is just another entry into the Stephen King renaissance in popular filmmaking. King offers strong source material and a competent writer and director can make very good films out of his ideas.
Rather than remakes of films already attempted, it would be nice to see some of his other stories turned into films. King is nothing if not prolific—there’s lots of material to mine. Still, if remakes are going to happen, let’s hope they’re as high quality as Pet Sematary.