The Pet Sematary remake unleashes a new twist on the supernatural horrors of Stephen King's
spine-chilling novel.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video I'm breaking down everything you
need to know about the shocking ending to the new Pet Sematary, including the true nature
of the demonic force in the movie and the crucial changes from the original story.
Plus, keep watching to the end for some bonus Stephen King easter eggs you might have missed.
Spoilers ahead so take care if you haven't seen the movie yet.
The real antagonist at the heart of the Pet Sematary story is the Wendigo demon.
After Jud and Louis find Ellie's beloved cat Church dead by the side of the road, they
take it to the Pet Sematary for burial.
As they go to bury the dead pet, Jud feels the pull of the Wendigo's spirit, so instead
he leads Louis over a barrier of sticks, through the woods and a swamp to an ancient Micmac
burial ground.
Jud then tells Louis to bury Church in this creepy place that's full of whispering voices.
A reanimated Church then appears at the family house the next day though he's much dirtier
and meaner.
Confused, Louis visits Jud to demand an explanation.
Jud tells him about the stories he's heard about the Wendigo, a malevolent demon feared
by native American tribes in the northern regions of the US and Canada.
The signs carved into the trees in the woods on the way to the burial ground, which Louis
also sees in the book at Jud's house, are warnings left by the Micmac people before
they fled the area.
They also built a deadfall as a wall or barrier to stop people going into the cursed area.
The ground beyond that barrier was soured or cursed by the Wendigo, meaning that if
a person or animal is buried in the old Micmac graveyard, they are reanimated and end up
possessed by the spirit of the evil demon.
For example, even after Louis realises the danger the resurrected Church poses to his
family and takes the possessed cat far away, the power of the Wendigo inside Church is
too strong and the cat makes his way back to the family home deliberately luring Ellie
into the road in front of a speeding truck, and jumping out of the way to safety just
before it crashes into her.
The change in Ellie is even more noticeable.
Initially after she returns from the dead, she's unsure where she is but quickly understands
that she's changed and she says to Louis "I'm dead, aren't I?"
She also tells him she can hear the woods inside her, another indication that the Wendigo's
spirit has invaded and occupied her body.
The demon also gives her an unnatural physical strength that a nine-year-old girl would be
unlikely to possess such as being able to drag her mother's body all the way to the
burial ground by herself and, when she fights her father, he finds it extremely difficult
to overpower her.
On top of that, the Wendigo can manipulate Ellie's body to communicate and taunt the
victims she's about to kill.
When she attacks Jud, Ellie tells him how she saw his dead wife Norma burning in hell,
and then the Wendigo even transforms Ellie's body and voice momentarily into Norma.
The possessed Ellie does the same with her mother, Rachel.
First she blames her mother for leaving her to die in the road and then accuses her of
having done the same with her sister Zelda.
Like Jud who refuses to believe he's seeing the real Norma, Rachel tells Ellie "you're
not my daughter", to which the now possessed Ellie replies "then go be with her", at which
point she stabs Rachel once more.
There's an interesting similarity between how the Wendigo exerts an evil influence on
people in Pet Sematary and how Pennywise influences people to commit terrible deeds in IT.
On top of that, there's a deliberate easter egg to Stephen King's IT with a road sign
for Derry in the scene where Rachel and Gage are stuck in a traffic jam as they try to
get back to Ludlow.
Derry is, of course, the town in Maine where IT takes place and where Pennywise shows up
every 27 years.
In contrast to IT though, where the Losers' Club is able to band together to defeat the
evil spirit, Pet Sematary has a much, much darker ending.
In fact, the 2019 remake goes further perhaps than the 1989 movie or the original novel
in terms of how many of the Creed family are killed by the Wendigo.
In this version, Ellie is first killed by the truck; Ellie then kills her mother and
resurrects her; and then as Louis fights with Ellie, the reanimated Rachel comes out of
nowhere and mortally spears Louis through the back.
After they drag his body off to the Micmac burial ground, we cut to a chilling final
scene of Gage helplessly waiting in the family car outside their home.
Louis, Ellie and Rachel then appear walking towards the car, Church jumps menacingly into
view, and as the screen cuts to black there's the horrifying sound of the car doors unlocking.
If you have any doubt about whether Gage survived, there's actually a clue in the opening scene
of the movie which heavily implies that he didn't.
The scene shows the aftermath after the car door was unlocked.
The door has been opened and there are a couple of bloody handprints on the window plus some
blood inside the door.
It seems pretty likely then that the possessed bodies of the Creed family will have killed
Gage and dragged him off to bury and resurrect him, providing the evil Wendigo demon with
yet another corpse to inhabit.
However, in the original story, it's just Gage and Rachel who are killed.
They're both buried by Louis and resurrected, and in the 1989 movie Rachel also kills Louis
after she returns.
There's also a couple of other major characters we need to talk about.
First of all is Zelda, Rachel's sister, who has a terrifying part to play in the remake
and gets more screentime than in the 1989 movie.
We learn in the film that Zelda suffered from spinal meningitis and there's a particularly
scary scene where we see just how badly she traumatised Rachel.
Rachel who was left alone by her parents to care for her sick sister used a dumbwaiter
to send food up to Zelda, but after the food got stuck, Zelda died in a horrific mangled
mess when she fell into the dumbwaiter.
And after Rachel and her family move to Ludlow, it feels like the spirit of the Wendigo that
stalks the land surrounding their new house plays a part in summoning the terrible recurring
visions of Zelda that Rachel begins to suffer.
After the resurrected Church returns to the house and starts acting maliciously, for example,
by scratching Ellie for the first time, not only does Louis hear a terrible groaning sound
from the basement with a warning that "the destruction of all he loves is very near",
but Rachel starts to hear terrible thumping noises from the roof and inside the walls
which culminate in a petrifying vision of her dead sister appearing inside the bathroom
cabinet in a similar way to how Zelda died inside the Dumbwaiter years ago.
Rachel's case shows us again how the Wendigo is able to use the grief, shame and sense
of regret someone may suffer after a terrible tragedy to manipulate its victims psychologically
and eventually cause their downfall.
We also need to talk about Victor Pascow who plays a small but important part as a voice
who repeatedly warns Louis against the dangers of crossing the deadfall.
He also tries to warn Louis against taking the dead Ellie up to the burial ground, though
of course Louis ignores him.
And Pascow also warns Gage and Rachel that Louis is in danger.
Now, some people have theorised that Pascow may not be acting so benevolently in Pet Sematary
because you could argue that he not only draws Louis's attention to the deadfall, but he
also leads Rachel and Gage back to Ludlow placing them in danger so that they eventually
become possessed by the Wendigo.
However, if we take Pascow at face value as a caution and remember that it was Jud who
took Louis over the threshold, I think that Pascow is a character that serves to draw
our attention to the folly of ignoring the warnings in front us.
Pet Sematary also warns us of the dangers of not learning how to deal with grief and
tragedy appropriately.
For instance, after Louis discovers Church has died, Rachel, who's never been able to
get over the death of her sister, asks Louis to tell Ellie that her cat ran way.
Basically, Rachel asks him to say anything except that the cat died.
Likewise, after Ellie dies, Louis can't accept her death or his feelings of guilt and regret
at insisting on staying in Ludlow after both Ellie and Rachel asked to move back to Boston.
So, he deliberately makes an excuse to stay behind when Rachel and Gage go to stay with
her family, and he also drugs Jud so he doesn't stop him from digging up the dead Ellie and
taking her to be resurrected.
Jud, who also didn't want to see Ellie sad at the loss of Church, was the original instigator,
of course, in taking the dead cat to be resurrected.
All of these terrible decisions show the folly of not facing up to reality and instead turning
to superstition or toying with supernatural forces we don't understand.
I've already touched on a few Pet Sematary book and movie easter eggs, but there's some
other interesting ones you might have missed.
Ellie refers to herself as Ellie the Great and Terrible both before she becomes possessed
and afterwards.
The nickname isn't just a neat little bit of foreshadowing of her terrible fate, it's
also an easter egg to book Zelda who had a picture on her wall of Oz the Great and Terrible
that smashed when she died.
In King's novel, Oz the Great and Terrible becomes a theme associated with an unnatural
and evil death and so, of course, it's especially fitting that it's a title that Ellie assumes
before she's taken over by the wicked Wendigo spirit.
An easter egg that flashes by pretty quickly is when the truck driver who accidentally
kills Ellie gets distracted by a phone call from Sheena just before the accident.
"Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" is the song by the Ramones that the truck driver from the 1989
movie was playing in his vehicle during the accident that killed Gage.
In fact, the decision by the filmmakers of this remake to change the child killed in
the accident did upset some King purists who prefer the idea of the youngest child becoming
corrupted by the Wendigo and being turned into a murderous infant.
For this movie though, I think it turned out to be great change and twist.
Jeté Laurence who plays Ellie in the new movie delivered a fantastic performance as
both the sweet-natured Ellie before her death and the angry murderously possessed Ellie
after her resurrection.
Having the older child come back from the dead also allowed her to interact with her
family in a way that just wouldn't have been possible or realistic with a toddler.
And if you're wondering whether there's likely to be a sequel that follows on from these
events, well, the directors have said they're much more interested in a possible prequel
story.
In an interview with Consequence of Sound, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura said that
"if there's anything here, there's a prequel.
[…] If you look at the book, we didn't cover all that stuff that happens before the Creed
family moves in."
As he says, there are stories from King's original book which weren't included in this
adaptation but which were included in the 1989 movie, such as how one of the town's
deceased World War 2 veterans, Timmy Baterman, was resurrected after his body was sent back
to the town from the war.
There was a tiny easter egg to this in the new movie via a newspaper headline that flashes
by very quickly.
Another area that could be explored in a prequel is a jump further back in time to when the
native Americans were still in the area around Ludlow.
This remake deliberately pointed out that the entire plot of land that the Creeds owned
extended back to the Pet Sematary and beyond the barrier.
And when Louis was reading about the Wendigo in Jud's house, there was a newspaper headline
that read "Indian land claims still unsettled".
A prequel could investigate what part the Wendigo might have played in any conflict
over land between native American tribes and those who settled the town of Ludlow.
Now, if you've seen both movies, which did you prefer?
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And leave any thoughts you have about this movie in the comments below.
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