cult film freak: REMAKE OF STEPHEN KING'S 'PET SEMATARY' WITH JASON CLARKE

Naomi Frenette as Upset Student leading to Jason Clarke's ghost story in PET SEMATARY Year: 2019

For a movie about a city family relocating to the country to "slow down," PET SEMETARY rushes through the first half with choppy editing, often seeming like a prolonged trailer...

Which only works in that youngest son Gage, the primary focus of the original, is pretty much forgotten, replaced by an older sister, whose age is far more suited to horror movie curiosity: And fans of either the Stephen King novel or the 1989 adaptation know exactly where curiosity gets you...

A reanimated Church the cat being set free to the woods in PET SEMATARY Rates: **

Kudos to the filmmakers for having four stunt cats instead of a single one made of CGI, which has been the trend lately. But reanimated feline Church is more irritable than antagonistic...

Meanwhile, dad has his own foreboding ghost while mom's dead sister flashbacks hardly even try surpassing the most nightmarish aspect of the original (even the name Zelda sounds spooky). What's intentionally the most eerie/creepy device are the animal masks worn by "a procession" of young cemetery dwellers...

A procession of masked children in the PET SEMATARY

The main problem is that this titular location at night seems part of a set, and is hardly important to the film except that John Lithgow's old local Jud (played far more mysteriously by Fred Gwynne before) knows his way around, showing an intense yet fairly dull husband/father Jason Clarke how everything works...

So when what happens happens, it's both predictable and, for the most part, pointless and, worst of all, not very frightening. Providing the new child menace, portrayed in a Linda Blair EXORCIST fashion by Jeté Laurence, some decent moments that would have fared better in her own vehicle. The pet just gets in the way.