Pet Sematary is the book that Stephen King thought might be too horrific to publish.
Its adaptation in a terrifying film in 1989 further cemented its place among the King
canon, and now we have an all-new adaptation.
But what about this version of Pet Sematary sets it apart?
For many Stephen King fans, there are non-scary books, there are scary books, and then there's
Pet Sematary.
The novel follows the Creed family as they move to rural Maine so that the patriarch,
Louis, can take a job as the head of the University of Maine's medical service.
Their new house is beside a road frequented by fast, heavy trucks that often claim the
lives of local pets.
As a result, neighborhood children have established a pet cemetery in the woods, complete with
the misspelled sign that makes up the book's title.
When his daughter Ellie's cat, Church, is run over and killed, Louis and his neighbor
Jud Crandall bury the cat near the cemetery… but Church soon returns to the Creed family
home.
However, something's not right about the resurrected family cat.
"Jesus Christ.
Dammit."
Just as Jud begins to regret bringing the cat back to life, another tragedy strikes
the family.
The Creeds' youngest son, Gage, is hit by another speeding truck, and Louis, shaken
by grief and his new understanding of the pet cemetery, begins to ponder the unthinkable.
Technically, the "pet sematary" of the novel's title isn't the actual supernatural part of
the story.
That honor goes to what Jud calls "the real cemetery," a burial ground set up at the back
of the pet cemetery.
That burial ground was built by the local Native American tribe, the Micmacs.
When Church dies, Louis chisels out a hole for him in the burial ground.
Jud explains that he once did the same thing with his own dog, Spot, who was also never
quite the same after coming back.
This leads to Jud's lesson for Louis:
"Sometimes, dead is better.
The person you put up there ain't the person that comes back."
Later in the novel, King reveals that the burial ground was at some point used for bodies
partially consumed by cannibals, and that a legendary supernatural creature called the
Wendigo has made a home there.
Jud says the ground went sour and now anything buried might come back as a hostile shell
of its former self.
Of course, none of this stops Louis after his son is killed.
King first conceived of Pet Sematary when he found himself in a very similar situation
to Louis Creed's.
He and his family moved to a rural home near the University of Maine, with a similarly
dangerous road and local pet cemetery.
His daughter's cat was killed by one of the trucks, and her resulting grief over the incident
helped inspire him to ponder what might happen if you could bring a loved one back.
As King told Charlie Rose in a 1993 interview:
"Here's something that we don't talk about.
People sometimes have kids who die.
There are terrible things that happen and sometimes a child will die young."
By the time he'd finished the novel, King thought Pet Sematary was simply too dark to
publish.
He put the novel in a drawer and believed it would never be released to the public in
his lifetime.
However, the book was ultimately pulled out and submitted to finish out King's contract
with his former publisher Doubleday.
It was a success, and is still among King's most widely read and celebrated books, made
all the more infamous because of King's own misgivings.
The 1980s were a particularly fertile time for King's works.
Six years after its publication, Pet Sematary was made into a film, with King himself providing
the screenplay and insisting that the movie be shot in his home state of Maine.
The film was a box office success and has gone on to be revered as one of the best Stephen
King adaptations.
In 1992, director Mary Lambert returned to direct Pet Sematary Two, a film following
a different family and their horrific experiences with the Micmac burial ground.
However, the sequel was not as successful as its predecessor, and King successfully
lobbied the studio to have his name removed from the project.
"Uh oh.
Looks like daddy got a boo-boo."
In the years since Lambert's film was released, Pet Sematary has retained its reputation as
one of King's most frightening stories.
It's not surprising that someone would eventually want to make an updated film adaptation.
Word of a new version of Pet Sematary first began to bubble up back in 2010, when writer
Matthew Greenberg was attached to write the screenplay.
Greenberg eventually fell by the wayside and now only has a story credit on the new film.
Development on the project stalled a bit until 2013, when director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo,
best known for 28 Weeks Later, was brought on to helm the remake.
Fresnadillo also eventually dropped out, and development quieted again.
Then, in 2017, directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team behind the hollywood
horror film Starry Eyes, were hired to tackle the new adaptation.
Though the new film seems to be very much in keeping with the spirit of King's original
novel, there's one major change in Pet Sematary that the filmmakers have already revealed.
In the second trailer for the film, it's revealed that the Creed child who's killed and resurrected
is the older Ellie, not toddler Gage.
The reveal sent a shock through fans expecting another largely faithful adaptation of the
book, but the filmmakers have some very good reasons for the change, among them the simple
fact that an older, and therefore larger child, is a bigger threat.
Plus, much of the horror in the 1989 film revolving around the resurrected Gage was
done with a doll, limiting what the filmmakers could do if they tried to go that route again.
As producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura put it, it was an opportunity to show the audience
something new.
He told Entertainment Weekly:
Such a major deviation from Pet Sematary's original plot is bound to divide fans of both
the source material and the original film.
On one hand, there are purists who would argue that Gage's death is the natural progression
of the story.
As the most vulnerable member of the Creed family, his death is the most tragic and his
resurrection is therefore the most horrifying.
On the other hand, there are fans who are intrigued by the choice, and interested in
seeing how things take shape.
Screenwriter Jeff Buhler admitted that even he took a little while to come around to the
idea.
So, what did King think of the big change to his story?
According to star Jason Clarke:
"Stephen King didn't have an issue with it."
Throughout his career, Stephen King has built a fictional universe all his own that expands
to connect, in ways both small and large, even his most self-contained novels.
This is most overt in his Dark Tower saga, which deals with the notion of a multiverse,
but even other novels contain these kinds of lateral references.
The original Pet Sematary novel features references to Cujo, 'Salem's Lot, and It.
With the television series Castle Rock throwing out King Easter eggs left and right, it makes
sense that the new film would also have its own list of references for King fans to spot.
Don't expect them to be too on the nose, though.
Widmyer told SyFy:
You can make a very scary, very stylish, and very violent horror film that still comes
away with a PG-13 rating.
For some filmmakers, that's the way to go, since it can help the box office if teenagers
are able to see it.
For other filmmakers, though, there's just no substitute for pushing the horror all the
way into the rated R territory.
For Pet Sematary, that was always going to be the right path.
In some ways, according to di Bonaventura, it felt like the only path.
He told SyFy:
Pet Sematary premiered at South by Southwest this year, making it the second major horror
release of 2019, along with Jordan Peele's Us, to claim a key spot at one of America's
biggest and trendiest film festivals.
That means that we can get an immediate answer to the most important question of all: is
it scary?
Well, according to those who saw it at South by Southwest, Pet Sematary is most definitely
a terrifying film.
"It's freaky as hell!"
"Scared the crap outta me!"
Megan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting wrote that:
You'll get the chance to see how scary the film is for yourself when it arrives in theaters
on April 5th.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.