Movie Review: Pet Sematary (2019)

Synopsis: Hoping to slow down and spend more time with his family, Dr. Louis Creed moves from Boston to a small town in Maine with his wife and two children. Shortly after moving in, they discover their property has a neighborhood pet cemetery (misspelled "sematary") and, when their cat is killed by one of the fast-driving trucks that pass their house, Creed's neighbor, Jud, shows him a part of the cemetery that brings the dead back to life. It works for the cat, though it isn't the same as it was before it died. And when his daughter, Ellie, is killed on her 9th birthday, Creed must make a similar decision.

Who's in it? The movie stars Jason Clarke, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Amy Seimetz and Obssa Ahmed.

Review: My wife has wanted to see this movie since it first came out, but I've been more than a little skeptical about yet another remake and put off watching it. We ended up finally doing so last night and I think even my wife agrees my original assumption was correct.

I'll start out by saying this isn't necessarily a bad movie. I won't even say the 1989 original was better, at least not by a measurable margin. However, there just isn't anything special about this film.

Here's the thing. If you're going to remake a movie that has become a classic, then you need to up your game and at least make it unique. This film doesn't make that effort and instead is basically the exact same movie with different actors and a few minor changes. What is supposed to keep me interested if I already know what's going to happen because I've seen it a dozen times before with the original?

Also, while I didn't bother to re-watch the original to see if I'm just imagining things, some of the "main" characters in this movie just didn't seem to have much of a role. Creed's second child, Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie) was just there and didn't do anything noteworthy. The film could have just as easily left him out and nobody would notice. His wife, Rachel (Seimetz) wasn't much better. If anything, I found I really didn't like her. I mean, I know she had a traumatic childhood, but her daughter's cat dies, and she makes it about herself. What kind of mom does that?

Probably the only highlight in the movie is I did find I liked Ellie (Laurence). She pulled off the cute kid part of it well and that made her extra creepy toward the end. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to make this movie anything memorable. 

Final Opinion: Since it is basically the same movie as the original with very few (if any) noteworthy changes, stick with the 1989 version.

My Grade: C-