Pet Sematary (2019)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Dr. Louis Creed	Jason Clarke
Rachel Creed	Amy Seimetz
Jud Crandall	John Lithgow	½
Ellie Creed	Jeté Laurence
Gage Creed	Hugo Lavoie Lucas Lavoie

Review

The endless remakes of horror classics has now reached movies that at best are no more than borderline classics. That being said, Mary Lambert's original adaptation of the Stephen King novel "Pet Sematary" did have that cult-movie potential to it, in the midst of otherwise B-movie qualities, thanks to peculiarities such as the constant dual atmosphere of optimism and looming tragedy, or Fred Gwynne's idiosyncratic character. The 2019 version is a more conventionally structured horror movie, with its jump-scares and cliched character build-ups, despite being narratively quite faithful to both King's novel and Lambert's 1989 movie. There is one big surprise in here, but other than that the movie feels like the long walk on that bumpy pathway which Jud Crandall leads Louis Creed down (or was it up?). Jeté Laurence gives a fine performance as Ellie, but the film is not worth the effort. See the 1989 version instead, if for nothing else than because Fred Gwynne's character is so much more interesting than John Lithgow's here.