The new Pet Sematary has fans debating the changes it made to the original story, but
what I've also discovered is there are some radically different endings to the remake
that were almost used in the final film.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers I'm Jan and in this video I'm revealing the three incredible
endings you never got to see in the new Pet Sematary, including the happy ending Stephen
King recommended.
Plus keep watching for more deleted scenes cut from the final film.
Spoilers ahead for the movie, so take care if you haven't seen it yet.
The filmmakers of the new Pet Sematary had three different endings planned for the movie
which they describe as dark, darker and darkest.
Now, the ending we actually got for the film was pretty bleak with not just Ellie and Rachel
dying, but Louis also killed.
On top of that, in the movie's final scene we see the resurrected Louis, Ellie and Rachel
approaching the family's sole survivor, Gage who's in a car looking out the window at his
undead family when we hear the horrifying sound of the doors unlocking.
The opening scene of the movie showed us an opened car door with bloody hand stains heavily
indicating that poor Gage surely didn't survive.
This chilling everyone-dies twist on the original story was the darkest version on the table,
and if you found it too horrifying for your liking you might have preferred the much lighter
ending that Stephen King suggested.
The horror legend saw an "early cut" once the filmmakers began their reshoots, and based
on that, he recommended "an ending where Gage is walking up the middle of the road.
We see dawn, and we hear a truck coming, and think, 'Oh my God, he's gonna get greased
in the road.
That's how this is gonna end!'
[…] Then at the last second, this woman pulls him out of the road and rescues him,
and says, ‘Where's your mommy and daddy?'"
Both King's original story and the 1989 movie had Gage rather than Ellie killed by a truck
in the road earlier in the story, so this alternate ending would have been a hat tip
to that, with the twist being this time the little toddler is saved… at least for the
time being.
King would have ended the movie right there, leaving the ultimate fate of the woman and
Gage unknown as she goes off in search of Gage's parents.
Speaking to EW, King suggested he's "a sucker for a happy ending" and it's interesting that
the finale he suggested for the remake would have been drastically different to how his
own book ended.
The second alternate ending was actually filmed and while it's still dark, it's just a touch
lighter than what we saw in the final movie.
In an interview with Collider, producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura describes what it entails.
"There's a version […] where mom and daughter are both back from the dead.
And there's a shot of [Louis] with Gage in his lap.
Both of them are normal.
[…] And then, mom walks in.
She's clearly out there in another world.
And daughter comes in, and daughter says, 'Hi, mommy.
I love you.'
And then the camera's on them like a family portrait.
And then it just pulls back, the little kid's crying, and [Louis] just looks like he's been
run over by a bus."
So, in this version we still have an undead Ellie and Rachel at the end, and although
it seems unlikely that Louis and Gage could survive the onslaught of these two reanimated
family members, the way it ends does leave open the slightest possibility.
This alternate ending is more of a direct play on the original 1989 movie's ending where
Louis was waiting in the kitchen for the resurrected corpse of Rachel to return to him.
In that movie, it showed Rachel grabbing a knife and ended on Louis's screams which is
why I think this second alternate ending for the new film very likely implies that Louis
and Gage will both die.
A 2017 draft of the screenplay also reveals yet another interesting finale that could
have been.
In this ending, it's Rachel who discovers Jud's dead body and then goes to look for
Ellie in the woods.
She finds her undead daughter in the Pet Sematary, and armed with Jud's gun she tries to shoot
Ellie but misses.
Ellie attacks her mother with the scalpel and during the fight Rachel drops the revolver.
Ellie grabs the gun, aims it at her mother and with pitch black eyes and a wicked smile
on her face, she says "love you mommy", then pulls the trigger.
But just at that moment Louis arrives, and in the aftermath we discover he's the one
who's been shot.
Louis dies leaving Rachel stricken with grief.
The undead Ellie then walks over to her mother and goes to kill her but notices something
about her mother's pain and instead whispers something to her.
The scene then cuts to Gage [asleep] in the car and suddenly Ellie's there smiling at
him.
Rachel then walks over, unlocks the car door and takes Gage over to the front porch with
her where she sits down.
The camera pans out to Ellie dancing in the yard, and a shadow appears in front of her.
Ellie looks up surprised and exclaims "Daddy!"
At which point the screen cuts to black.
So, as you can see, this ending like the others is pretty crazy and twisted.
It's more open in terms of whether Rachel and Gage could survive but, of course, they'd
need to defeat the resurrected Louis and Ellie.
Now, if you watched the trailers for the movie, you'll probably have noticed quite a few scenes
missing from the final film.
For example, several Zelda scenes didn't make it in, including this one of Zelda creeping
up behind Rachel and grabbing her.
Other Zelda scenes that were cut involve Rachel experiencing more visions of her sister when
she visits her childhood home in Boston.
In an interview with SlashFilm, the directors described a deleted scene where Rachel goes
to her sister's bedroom to confront her fear of her dead sister in a moment similar to
one in the 1989 movie.
The reason for this cut was that the directors "wanted to [...] focus the Zelda scenes" on
the house the family moved to in Ludlow as by only having visions of Zelda appear to
Rachel in the family's new house, it emphasises the power the Wendigo has on the area near
the cursed burial ground.
The filmmakers also said they didn't want the Zelda storyline to overwhelm the film,
but they've promised that we'll see these extra scenes on the home entertainment release.
Interestingly enough, though, Zelda wasn't actually in the original script for the remake,
but when directors Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer came on board, they insisted on including
Zelda's story as it was vital to give Rachel a more substantial role.
There's another terrifying snippet in the trailers that didn't make it in which looks
like a flashback to when Jud's wife Norma was alive.
This scene could have been really interesting as it could have helped explain why Ellie
tells Jud she's seen his dead wife Norma burning in hell for what he did to her.
In King's original novel, the possessed Gage taunts Jud about Norma cheating on him with
all his friends.
And in the book, Jud also had a brief history of having visited prostitutes.
Kölsch has said that the deleted scene shows "more of Jud's backstory, and his relationship
with the burial ground."
Which leads me to think that when Norma died, Jud resurrected her, but as with everyone
who comes back Norma wasn't right.
You can see her here rocking back and forth in a chair while an iron has been left on
in the background.
Jud probably had to kill the undead Norma and now the Wendigo is using Ellie to come
back as his wife to punish him.
There are also some intriguing trailer scenes of children in animal masks that never made
it into the final movie.
In the film, we only see the kids as they parade down to the Pet Sematary, but, in the
trailer, there's also these additional scenes of the children going beyond the barrier all
the way to the cursed burial ground where they seem to be burying a dead animal.
The directors have revealed that these scenes were only filmed for marketing the movie.
In their interview with SlashFilm, they explained that "on studio films, they send marketing
departments down, and they actually have their own camera unit, and they take your actors
and go shoot things that are just specifically for trailers, and marketing spots."
In fact, the directors only saw those scenes for the first time when they saw the trailer!
They were slightly concerned that these fake scenes, so to speak, might confuse the audience
but, in the end, they don't think they did.
What do you think about any of these deleted scenes and would you have preferred any of
the alternate endings?
Tap the screen to vote in the poll and leave your thoughts in the comments below.
And if you enjoyed this, subscribe and hit the bell to get all my new videos.
Next tap left for a full breakdown of Pet Sematary including easter eggs, the Wendigo
and sequel possibilities, or tap right for my horror movie deleted scenes playlist.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!