On stage in front of a South by Southwest crowd that had just been laughing, gasping and cringing to the wildly dark premiere of Pet Sematary, director Dennis Widmyer said, “What do you think? Feel good movie of 2019?” Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura had no use for sarcasm. He was blunt: “How f–ked up is this movie?” For the last several years, a Pet Sematary remake had been kicked around as an idea by di Bonaventura and producer Mark Vahradian. The hype kept mounting through the release of two trailers the last few months and a tweet from Stephen King saying, “This is a scary movie. Be warned.” And on the final night of South By Southwest, Widmyer and fellow director Kevin Kolsch delivered their finished product to an entranced — and freaked-out — audience that included stars Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz and Jeté Laurence but not John Lithgow. The Paramount film, written by Jeff Buhler, hews close to the 1983 King novel and the 1989 Mary Lambert movie in the general plot: A family moves to a rural town in Maine and the father discovers a burial plot that brings a dead pet back to life. But as was revealed in the trailer the family’s 9-year-old daughter, Ellie, rather than 2-year-old son dies, like in the book and first movie. “If you’ve read the book, Ellie is the character in the book that is asking these questions about death. She’s asking about mortality,” Widmyer said. “We found that fascinating, then when she comes back to show the other side of that conversation, to mirror that in a very corrupt way and have that psychology in the end of the film, which was really exhilarating for us… If you have the same book and 10 different directors you’re going to have 10 different interpretations of that. So this is our interpretation.” Clarke was known as “the archivist” on set because he had read the novel so often. Seimetz said she first read the book when she was eight. She and a friend had gotten on an R.L. Stine kick and then turned to Christopher Pike before taking the next step and reading “Pet Sematary,” as well as “Cujo.” Widmyer said they wanted to respect King’s novel while refreshing the movie for a new audience. “It was really validating for us then when he saw the film he was such a fan of it,” Widmyer said. “I think he saw we kept the essence of the novel.” For the directors and producers, that essence dealt with getting under the skin of the question of death. The mystery of where we go after we die and how to deal with a close one dying endured throughout the film. Pet Sematary, of course, offers a frightening scenario for what happens when a father doesn’t properly process these questions. Laurence, who has also appeared in TV shows Jessica Jones and The Americans and played 9-year-old Ellie, didn’t come away too shaken, however. “I wasn’t that scared,” she said, “because I was one of the scary ones.”<doc-sep>After the second trailer for the 2019 remake of Stephen King's Pet Sematary dropped back in early February, fans of the original novel got a shock when they saw that Ellie Creed would be killed off and resurrected instead of her little brother, Gage. But don't worry, even the project's screenwriter, Jeff Buhler (The Prodigy, Nightflyers), wasn't initially sure about that massive change. In fact, it took a little time for him to realize that it was the right choice. “It felt like a natural choice. Now, I knew immediately people are gonna freak because everyone remembers Gage. It’s like, ‘What the f— are you doing? !’ As a matter of fact, I had the same reaction," Buhler told SYFY WIRE at the movie's world premiere at SXSW in Austin. "I was like, ‘We can’t do this.’ And then once it settles, once that initial Stephen King purist shock settles and you start thinking about the mechanics of writing the story and how it would feel on film, it all started to feel more and more right ... It’s impossible to adapt a work like Pet Sematary and not step on somebody’s toes so we just kind of picked one big toe to step on and just left it at that. Otherwise, people would nitpick other little story ideas and it was just like, ‘We’re just gonna go for it.’" Credit: Christian Long Dennis Widmyer, who co-directed the film with Kevin Kölsch, felt that the major deviation from the source material made a lot of sense when put into the context of Ellie's relationship with her father in the book. “It felt good because in the novel, the character of Ellie is the one that’s posing all these big questions about death and mortality and the death of her animal and why do animals die before people do?" he said. "And Louis, the father, has to answer those questions so to us, the idea of being able to revisit those conversations at the dark half of the movie, just felt like going full circle with that theme, so that alone excited us … we were really excited about that and I think it shows in the film. We were able to do a lot of good stuff with that." When it comes to producers, Mark Vahradian and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, it was all about defying audience expectations. After all, many people love the original adatpation from 1989, so you don't want to retread charted territory. "That’s an important part of the moviegoing experience, certainly in horror, so we would never do anything to offend Stephen King, but we had conversations about this," said Vahradian. "I think he felt the same way about it as we did, which was, ‘let’s surprise them, let’s take a liberty that doesn’t change the philosophy of this thing or the meaning of it, but we’ll make it more entertaining as an experience." "By changing our children, because she’s older, you’re allowed to have a much more in-depth conversation about death and the meaning of it, why people are afraid of it," added di Bonaventura. "All that stuff, you can’t do with a three-year-old, so that was a very conscious decision to go at the family theme and the notion of death in a family by [killing off] the older child. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different.” Video of Pet Sematary (2019) - Trailer 2 - Paramount Pictures To get ready for her role as Ellie, Jeté Laurence watched the original film and read part of the book with her dad. "I watched the movie—it was pretty scary, but I still watched it," she said. Based on King's 1983 novel of the same name, Pet Sematary is about Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), a university doctor whose life begins to sink into the supernatural mire after his family cat, cheekily named Winston Churchill, is run down in the street. After his friendly neighbor, Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), guides him to a magical burial ground that brings dead animals (and people) back to life, Louis cannot go back to his old routine, particularly when he and his wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), suffer a devastating personal loss. But as Jud wisely puts it, "Sometimes, dead is better." "For me, I always looked at it as a drama. It’s a horror movie and a scary movie but for me, Louis Creed, it’s a dramatic role … It’s about a family and a man’s descent into madness," Clarke told us. Pet Sematary will blink the dirt from its undead eyes when it opens everywhere April 5, going head-to-head with DC and Warner Bros.' Shazam! for box office supremacy.<doc-sep>New Pet Sematary TV spot debuts ahead of world premiere Paramount Pictures has released a brand new TV spot for the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s terrifying novel Pet Sematary. Starring starring Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow, the film will have its world premiere on March 17 at the 2019 SXSW. Check out the video below! RELATED: Coming Soon Visits the Set of the New Pet Sematary! Pet Sematary is based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King which follows Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), who, after relocating with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbor, Jud Crandall (John Lithgow), setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences. RELATED:Pet Sematary Trailer: What’s Dead Should Stay Dead Paramount Pictures‘ adaptation will be directed by Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch (Starry Eyes) and is written by Jeff Buhler, the showrunner for Syfy’s upcoming horror science fiction series, Nightflyers, based on the George R.R. Martin novella. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (1408, Transformers) is producing along with Mark Vahradian and Steven Schneider (Insidious). Pet Sematary is slated for release on April 5.<doc-sep>
Pet Sematary (2019 movie) Close this dialog window Streaming Options “Did we make the feel-good movie of 2019?” director Dennis Widmyer asked the South by Southwest film festival crowd who had just watched the world premiere of Pet Semetary, a bold new take on Stephen King’s ultra-dark classic horror novel. You probably know the basic story: Doctor Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz), daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence) and toddler Gage move into a rural Maine home with a rather large backyard that includes a pet burial ground. When Ellie’s beloved cat Church gets run down in the road, a neighbor (John Lithgow) lets him in on a secret way to bring the cat back to life — but they don’t come back the same. The fateful decision sets into motion a series of escalating tragic events and this new version does not pull any punches. “It was always a tough difficult film, it deals with grief and very mature emotional issues,” said Widmyer, who helmed the movie along with Kevin Kölsch. “It’s not about vampires or werewolves… but [Paramount] got behind it and saw it as a very elevated horror film. We fought for it and they fought for us and in the end we’re really proud of it.” Here are some early critic reviews and fan reactions and then we have a bit more insight from the directors about that big change: Collider: “Pet Sematary evokes the feeling that Widmyer and Kölsch knew exactly what they wanted to achieve with this adaptation and fully committed with confidence. I applaud them for the vision and dedication, and I also applaud the studio for letting them just go for it. Again, Pet Sematary isn’t striving to be an easy communal crowdpleaser. Just like the source material, it’s a movie with a real thoughtful mean streak that’ll chill you to the bone, and ensure you remain sufficiently on edge well after it concludes.” THR: “…a solid if not earthshaking horror pic built around notably good performances… Unfortunately but not fatally, the film soon makes this reanimated loved one more monstrous than unsettling, possessed of unlikely strength and a little too similar to the growling monster-people found in garden-variety horror films.” Bloody Disgusting: “… they give us a story so bone-chilling, so substantial, and even with a little bit of humor to alleviate the brutal blow of abject terror. It honors every bit of King’s meditation on death and grief while retaining its own identity …Go in fresh, and let the exhilarating tale of primitive dread and anguish wash over you. It’s shocking, heartbreaking, freaking scary, and even funny. It’s worth it.” As first reported by EW, the film makes a big departure from the original 1983 novel and 1989 Mary Lambert film in that — major spoiler alert — the Creed family’s pivotal mid-film tragedy isn’t Gage being killed but rather daughter Ellie, which gave the film’s final act some very different (and arguably creepier and more unsettling) material to work with. “If you’ve read the book, Ellie is the character in the book asking these questions about death, about mortality, about why cats don’t live as long as people,” Widmyer said. “So we felt it would be fascinating, when she comes back, to show the other side of that conversation, and mirror that in a very corrupt way. To have that psychology at the end of the film was really exhilarating, that we could go full circle with that.” Added producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura: “When we first started talking about this, it was [a conversation about] let’s get under the question of death, and a sense of how a family is disintegrating, it’s super hard to do that with a three-year-old.” The filmmakers added that King himself has seen the film and given it his blessing. “He saw we kept the essence of the novel, the things we were changing we weren’t fundamentally changing from the source material … it was validating to hear he was a fan of the film.” Close this dialog window Streaming Options Related content: