Film Review - Pet Sematary (2019)

Pet Sematary is the second film adaptation of the Stephen King novel (a previous one written by King himself was made in 1989) and stars Jason Clarke as a Boston doctor who moves to the country with his family to wind things down a bit but when their pet Cat Church is run over by a Truck he struggles to tell his young daughter the news until a nearby neighbour (John Lithgow) tells him of a possible way to make everything alright again.

Pet Sematary is not a good movie and along with Mary, Queen of Scots is the other worst movie I’ve seen so far this year but why Is that well let me count the ways:

Firstly, the movie is not very scary and like a lot of horror movies these days it relies way too much on loud noises, quick cuts and jump scares to frighten its audience and for me I just don’t respond to that kind of horror movie I like more the slow burn and tense style of horror which the same studio Paramount made just last year in A Quiet Place but I suppose that’s the difference between a good horror team and a bad one which this movie has.

Secondly the characters feel deathly dull and flat and some of the performances don’t help, Jason Clarke just came across as a poor man’s Mark Ruffalo and all I kept thinking was “Mark would’ve nailed this role” and I have liked him in other movies but here he just felt flat and boring, John Lithgow one of my favorite actors for a long time ever since watching 3rd Rock from the Sun on TV as a kid is really disappointing here mainly because I just couldn’t buy him in this old man role where he looked kind of creepy and I just went “No I don’t want to see him in this kind of role.”

And lastly the look of the film is terrible, a lot of it takes place at night and its very dark to look at but it has none of the same effectiveness that Jordan Peele did with his night photography in Us recently instead it just looks murky and black and at times I just found it ugly to look at on a big cinema screen.

And this story has so much that I should like in terms of being a story about Death and Grief and when to Let Go of those we love now that their gone and having proper MA bloody violence and an Evil Cat and yet I was so bored by it all and its along with Mary Queen of Scots the worst movie I’ve seen so far this year, 1 out of 5.