j* Movie Reviews 2019

Pet Sematary (2019)

This could use a bit of the re-animation it claims invoke - or should've just stay buried.

I mean, the premise of this is great. A haunted landscape. Spooky children, spooky pets, isolated houses in the country and indigenous spirits and warnings. And trucks, big, dangerous trucks. There's so much going on. And yet this film failed to engage me in so many dimensions.

If I have seen the original, I don't remember it. And I lean towards the idea that I probably have seen it, at some time. We did watch the making of the original film, Unearthed & Untold (2017) earlier in the year, in preparation for seeing this on in the cinemas. I digress. The making of the older film looked awesome. In fact, I think enjoyed Unearthed & Untold more than I enjoyed this final product.

There's just so much going on and no characters that felt relatable. They're all bringing far too much troubled and personally haunted past along for the ride that the spook of the landscape and the title premise, the Pet Sematary doesn't have space to shine. The processions of spook-kids in their animal masks is such a fleeting feature and the ideas of loss and grief around animals plays such a minor role as to be basically obsolete. Again, maybe I just assumed this would be an excellent story for exploring those ideas of childhood loss and rage. But no. This story is dominated by adults and their own personal growing up issues.

So what could be an excellent story premise is muddled by layers of other hauntings and visions and mental disturbia. The re-animated cat is cool, but far less creepy than anticipated. The locations all felt green-screeny safe rather than creepily immersive. When the main girl, who was probably the closest character with which I identified turned, it seemed convenient and plot pointy and a bit too meh. Again, I expected a crisis story of re-animated pets, and instead I got a mental meltdown story about adults and their issues. Too many different plotlines and none of them felt coherently connected to the ultimate exploitative element, the Sematary.

J* gives it 2 stars.