CREDIT: Kerry Hayes/Paramount Pictures

Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie

Directors: Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: R for Roadside Accidents, Scratchings, Stabbings, and Creepy Voices With a Surprising Amount to Say

Release Date: April 5, 2019

Little kids often ask their parents what happens after we die, but they’re less inclined to follow up about what happens after we return from death. And yet, it isn’t like that latter question has gone unanswered. Speculation about that possibility has in fact been the domain of mythmakers for thousands of years. Stephen King is one of the most prominent mythmakers of the past few decades when it comes to our most pressing supernatural concerns, so the fact that Pet Sematary is only the latest one of his stories to be not only adapted but also re-adapted does not need to lead us to despair over the death of originality in our reboot culture. Instead, we should wonder why we need to keep re-telling these stories when their lessons should have been clear enough from the very beginning.

The setting is a sort of Anytime, USA in a way that demonstrates the limits of going back to nature, as Louis and Rachel Creed (Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz) move with their two young kids into a big house deep in the woods of rural Maine. This is the kind of creepy place where kids in animal masks march to bury dead animals in the title misspelled gravesite. Interestingly enough, the Creeds are not especially unnerved by this ritual, but if they were more in touch with the supernatural, they would realize that they should interpret the procession as an ominous warning. But instead, when their beloved cat Church is killed by a truck, Louis lets himself be convinced by their friendly but foolhardy neighbor Jud (John Lithgow) to bury Church in a spot that just screams, “Come here if you want to meddle where you don’t belong.”

It should be plainly obvious what disaster awaits the Creeds from this point, whether or not you’re familiar with King’s novel and/or the 1989 film. But the overwhelmingly crushing power of one mistake compounding into inescapable horror is effective nonetheless. The resurrections of Church and others result in some unholy combination of zombie and possession. The power of something familiar being just slightly off is profoundly unnerving. People have been warning each other for ages about the folly of what is attempted in Pet Sematary, and this edition does not offer much new, but it is still likely to make you shiver in your seat or laugh at the insanity.

Pet Sematary is Recommended If You Like: Stephen King’s Maine, The Orpheus myth, Mama

Grade: 3 out of 5 Wendigos