Should be obvious, but just in case: I'm going to massively spoil all three versions of Pet Sematary - novel, 1989 film and 2019 film. Seriously. Like, about to dissect all three in detail.
I read Pet Sematary on a whim during Spring Break this year and really liked it. I'm not a writer by any means, but I feel like it works on a lot of levels. There's the obvious, surface-level scares like zombie cat, flashback story of the zombie veteran with the demon voice, the Wendigo, stabby zombie kid, etc. Then there's the deeper level that digs into what I think of as the "secular sacred" - things that people consider taboo on a human level rather than a cultural or religious one. Obviously no line is truly universal, but I think there's plenty of reverence/fear for the death of an innocent, the bond between parent and child, the oppression of grief and the awfulness of the choice between living with the grief or profaning the grave. I think those are the things Stephen King was talking about when he referred to Pet Sematary as the book that scared him the most.
I have a lot of feelings about different elements of the novel's plot and how they were handled by both movies. Try to act surprised. I've started this blog post several times and decided to organize it by plot element and character rather than by adaptation.
The Doctor
- In the book: Since it's a book, we can see Louis Creed's thoughts and whatnot. The book would be third person limited, except that toward the end King takes us into his wife's and Jud's thoughts too. Like lots of King protagonists, Louis isn't set up to be some saint or superman - he's a perfectly normal man. Sure, every now and then he'll look at a pretty girl, or in frustration with his kids will fantasize about leaving it all and working at Disney, but ultimately he's a decent fellow who loves his family.
- 1989 film - There's an important argument Louis and Rachel have in the book that is completely omitted from this film. I know you can't put everything from the book in the movie, but cutting that and similar conversations was the wrong choice. Generally, my gripes about the 1989 film have to do with it trying too hard to adhere to the novel blow-by-blow - it ends up being a highlight reel with little to no character development. The 1989 Louis has like two facial expressions and one tone of voice right up until the end. He was Kristen Stewart before it was cool.
- 2019 film - This film spent more time in conversations and relationships. There's still less than the novel, as there has to be unless it's a miniseries or something, but generally I think the 2019 version made much better choices about what book elements to omit. The aforementioned argument is combined with other conversations in the novel and it gives lots of depth to Louis and Rachel in a short period of time. So a better script and a much better actor make the 2019 Louis a more recognizable and sympathetic figure. He comes much closer to embodying the torture and darkness described in the novel.
- In the book - Rachel's big hang-up with death is made clear pretty early on, but the reason for it is revealed slowly. Like Louis, Rachel is well described and realistic; in her actions, her dialogue and the occasional glimpses into her thoughts, she is made recognizably human and lovable and we are emotionally affected by the compound tragedy in her story. I did roll my eyes a little at the intimate scene, which bordered on instructive, but I think that's a King trademark.
- 1989 film - Like the 1989 Louis, 1989 Rachel is a cardboard cutout. I am a little more sympathetic to this actress' plight because she has like 7 lines total, so she REALLY has no opportunity to give Rachel any life at all. Since that all-important argument is cut, her hang-ups with death and the reasons for them have no teeth at all. She has no righteous anger or compelling anxiety...just another scared blonde in a horror film.
- 2019 film - This Rachel benefits from more screen time altogether, both because of the restored conversations early on and from some straight up abandonment of the novel's plot at the end. The 2019 film makes the very smart decision to not have Rachel popping back and forth so much, so we get to see her grapple with her Zelda issues alongside the Church storyline so that more ground is covered in less time. And having her come back and verbalize her feelings about Zombie Kid is just fantastic. It heightens and further exposes the conflict of death versus reanimation, which is one of the *real* scary things about the story.
- In the book - Rachel's parents are kind of jerks, and they for sure don't like Louis. The Daddy-hates-boyfriend trope is a little worn, but it does add salt to the funeral fight and subsequent reconciliation. And wouldn't ya know it, soon as Dad starts to care about Louis, Louis needs lots of caring about. Not that it helped much.
- 1989 film - In the interest of time, the part where Dad bribes Louis to break up with Rachel is cut. It's just barely alluded to before the Thanksgiving trip and in what I think is a word-for-word transcription of the novel's funeral fight. But without the preceding history, the fight just looks cartoonish and stupid. In fact, I think this movie comes close to building some real sadness immediately after the child death, but then the fight happens with literally no warning or obvious reason and all that pathos breaks. No salt. Also, Dad's stereotypically Jewish mannerisms in this movie could have come from a Family Guy cutaway.
- 2019 film - Like the other movie, this one also cuts the bribery part. Know what else it cuts? Practically everything else having to do with Rachel's parents, including the Thanksgiving trip and the fight. The ghost (HAHAHAHA) of that subplot remains when Louis tells Rachel how irresponsible her parents were for leaving her alone with Zelda. Otherwise, they may as well not exist. To me, that makes way more sense when it comes to dropping elements for a film. The possible payoff of added tragedy and emotional pain was not worth the sacrifice of pacing and runtime, so they smartly removed it wholesale and spent more time on a smaller circle of characters.
- In the book - Rachel's breakthrough is a beautiful moment in the book. We've been frustrated and confused alongside Louis for quite some time, so to finally understand what she went through is a relief to him and to us. The Oz The Gweat And Tewwible thing is used to mess with our brains...it pokes at us like a song stuck in our heads and helps the reader feel unsettled or bewildered when Louis feels that way. When I re-read the book knowing I was planning to dive into the movies, I thought, "Ain't no way this element makes it into the films. It's too weird, takes too much explaining, doesn't deliver enough scares and there are better ways to achieve the same effect on film."
- 1989 film - Welp, I was right about Oz. Rachel's explanation of Zelda is understandably rushed in comparison to the book, but it's also a little breathless and fake. She doesn't look sufficiently grotesque to me, which might be due to the time period. I don't feel afraid of her when she's "revealed" or when she threatens Rachel later on. And when Gage holds a cane and has her dress and hat on, ostensibly to draw a connection between them to make up for the demon-who-knows-your-secrets thing, all I can do is sing, "It's hard out here for a pimp..." To me, this movie would have benefited more from removing Missy and Zelda and restoring Norma for the first death.
- 2019 film - Oz makes a cameo in one of Ellie's lines - "The great and terrible." Which, I'll admit, comes across as a weird non sequitur if you haven't read the book. Similarly weird is the altered version of Zelda's death. I understand that asphyxiation as described by the book is hard to make look truly scary and that the dumbwaiter creates jumpscare opportunities, but it still reads a little shoehorned. "I wasn't supposed to use the dumbwaiter because it broke sometimes." ...wat? But I will say that Zelda's appearance is much scarier in this version and that the Zelda connection is made much creepier at the end.
- In the book - Standard-issue kids until Gage dies. It leans too hard into the cheesy father-son bonding in an effort to make Gage's death hurt a little more, but at least there's the vomiting and terrible-twos for a little balance. Ellie's psychic abilities are well established, if a little heavy-handed.
- 1989 film - The pre-accident kids are handled similarly to the book. Ellie's lines in particular are a great study in how dialogue in a novel and dialogue in a film sometimes need to differ - what book Ellie says without much of a problem makes 1989 Ellie sound...just weird. Having said that, the actress playing Ellie does a good job with what she has.
- 2019 film - Just like it's hard to make asphyxiation look scary, it's hard to build a deep relationship between a father and his preverbal toddler son beyond the obvious. So instead, Gage is more peripheral, save for a brief foreshadowing that he's the psychic this time, and the relationship between Ellie and her parents is established. This Ellie has fewer "I said this in the book" lines - indeed, fewer lines altogether until she dies - and more mannerisms, like fake ballet and wandering/nosy curiosity.
- In the book - Church comes back janky, not mean. Also, I feel like the neutering plot point was unnecessary if the cat was gonna get run over anyway. Like the love scene, I feel like this is Stephen King's personal journal creeping into the book.
- 1989 film - Church comes back mean, and Jud KNEW HE WOULD MANNNN, because so did his dog! "I had to teach Ellie that dead is better" is an awkward explanation in the novel and it's even worse here. Also they keep him after he came back mean because....?
- 2019 film - Church comes back mean, so they do the somewhat understandable, if inhumane, thing and "lose" him. I suppose they had to set up continuity so that when later zombies are mean, it all holds, but I feel like they missed an opportunity with their fancy 2019 special effects to make Church janky in addition to mean. I guess they wanted to keep it as realistic as possible and didn't want to end up with an obviously CGI cat taking us out of the movie.
- In the book - Jud's probably my favorite character in the book. Like Rachel's story with Zelda, Jud's history with the sour ground is a good slow build to a satisfying conclusion, if you can call slaughter satisfying. Norma is a little shallow in terms of characters, but I think that's intentional, so that we can feel as separated from her death as Ellie does.
- 1989 film - I'm pretty sure Jud has the most lines in this movie. Admittedly, that makes sense - he's a major force for both exposition and plot. By his second scene, I said aloud, "Fred Gwynne is working so hard in this movie." As I write, I'm trying to decide if that's fair or not. After all, he does have more opportunity than anyone else to do some acting. But man, when he and Louis are headed up to bury Church, the juxtaposition between Louis's performance and Jud's is pretty striking.
- 2019 film - Jud is made more distant and creepy rather than a close family friend, although there's a little of that as well. In the book and the 1989 film, we're meant to trust him from the first and feel for him when he deals with his internal struggle. In the 2019 film, we always sense that he's a little off. He's also not the sole source of information about the Sematary, as you'll see later...
- In the book - If being in the room when someone dies makes you the recipient of Ghost Advice, Louis should be seeing way more people than Pascow. He's not a brand-new doctor, man. Also, "The barrier must not be broken...the ground is sour" and so on is all well and good, but Pascow is a 1980s college kid, so why can't he just say, "Yo, don't bury anyone past this point." As far as their little hike together, the book does a great job of detailing the panic and rationalization Louis goes through.
- 1989 film - The special effects on Pascow are actually pretty good here. His head wound is proper grody. But his sight gag of being on the airplane with Rachel just annoys me, and the post-hike panic by Louis is cut. He goes straight from muddy feet to the laundry chute with narry a scene.
- 2019 film - I worry that there's some tokenism at work with the casting of Pascow here... particularly when the poc doctor character has been cut for time. Aside from that, this Pascow is appropriately spooky and we get a truncated, but still palpable, shot of Louis's bewilderment at his muddy feet.
- In the book - Norma's death is the hinge point for a lot of things: Ellie's deepening grasp of death, Rachel's continuing avoidance of it, and Jud's modeling of healthy grief ahead of Louis's loss. Like I said before, she's more of a distant acquaintance, both to us and the characters, so her death is sad but not overwhelming.
- 1989 film - So. They deleted Norma entirely, choosing instead to beef up the Missy character. I think they were trying to make her super awkward and off-putting intentionally, creating the knowledge-but-distance the book had with Norma in a different way. Having her hang herself was an opportunity for what would have been mildly shocking imagery in 1989 that Norma's more conventional death would not have provided. At first, I think I was just angry that they took Norma out. In retrospect, I think they just made one choice among many possible ones that just happened not to be the choice I would make.
- 2019 film - Doesn't happen. Norma's death is moved to before the Creeds move in and Missy is eliminated entirely. The Pet Sematary conversation contains elements of all of Ellie's understandings of death from the book, and adds the notion that Ellie is vaguely aware of Zelda.
- In the book - Happens while Ellie and Rachel are gone, so they are never aware of a resurrected cat and only vaguely aware that Church is janky.
- 1989 film - Sticks to the book
- 2019 film - This time, Rachel and Ellie are present, but don't see the dead cat. Louis tells Rachel about it, but Church returns before they tell Ellie. Rachel then assumes the cat was never dead, joking that she's glad Louis isn't a vet.
- In the book - Gut wrenching. Especially when it details how Louis replays it again and again, only this time he saves Gage. Oh right by the way - Gage dies in the book. This is important to remember.
- 1989 film - Another moment that could have been truly emotional, but they stifle it with a campy "NOOOOOOOO" and a too-soon cut to baby pictures and whatnot. I feel like they were aiming for "overwhelmed by memories" and fell short.
- 2019 film - I'm sure the big switcheroo is foreshadowed plenty of times (the movie poster, for example), but there were two instances I picked up on. The first is when Church comes back - he knocks over one of the wooden letters that spells "Ellie" on her dresser. The second is super obvious - Gabe drew the picture of someone bleeding, meaning he's the psychic and Ellie's the zombie. The way they shot it hits me as almost poetic: Gage sees Ellie and Church and starts running toward the road, but Louis catches him in time. Just like the novel's Louis played in his head over and over. But like they said in MIB3, where there is death there must always be death. So in exchange for keeping Gage, we lose Ellie.
The Warning
- In the book - Jud is at war within himself. He finds the strength to warn Louis not to do it, but the Wendigo puts him to sleep when the game is on. King's zombies kind of straddle the line between zombie and possession victim - that makes the flashback plenty scary.
- 1989 film - Another example of Fred Gwynne earning that paycheck. "She knew it was an abomination!" with those wide eyes while Louis sits there looking like he's trying to get a popcorn hull out of his teeth is quite something. The flashback definitely looks scary, but I was disappointed when it became clear that the movie was dropping the "dead person knows all your secrets" subplot.
- 2019 film - Jud's regret is scooted back to the scenes where Church comes back mean. Once Ellie's dead and Louis gets the idea, he just drugs Jud to keep him out of the way. The flashback is reduced to a news-article montage, which is a little hackneyed but acceptable for the greater cause of a decent runtime. The zombie's various capabilities are therefore all revealed in Ellie later.
- In the book - King indulges in some nastiness. Injuries left from the accident, underground things, etc. Plus, this two-year-old says some REALLY grown-up things all of a sudden. Resurrected Gage is frightening, obscene and heartbreaking.
- 1989 film - Just as the film averted its gaze when Gage died, so too did it treat his reanimated form with delicateness. He's a little pale and has a scrape on his head, but otherwise he looks just like Gage when he was alive. He's not even dirty. Like I said before, the whole reveal-your-secrets thing is abandoned in this film; instead, like Church, Gage comes back mean and aims to take people out like he's auditioning for John Wick.
- 2019 film - Ellie's level of unsettling lands in between Book Gage and 1989 Gage. She's not sporting obvious injuries as you would expect based on how she died, but she's not just dusted with white powder and sent on her way either. She differs from her brothers (lol) in that she is the sole model for how a human reacts to being reanimated and she retains aspects of both prior approaches as well as some gifts of her own. She knows secret things just like the book zombies, but in her case it's because she met the spirits of other departed people while she was gone. She's mean and out to get folks just like the book and 1989 zombies, but it's because those people did something to deserve it: Jud did something unspecified to Norma, Rachel secretly wanted her sister to die and also "didn't do anything" to prevent Ellie's death, and Louis brought her back, which she describes as a terrible experience. Her unique contribution is her ability to reflect on what has happened to her. She makes it clear that she realizes she is dead and that her reanimation is unnatural.
- In the book - Gage takes out Jud and Rachel, but Louis manages to stop him. Does he learn his lesson? NOPE.
- 1989 film - Again, could have been poignant...when Louis is forced to put the reanimated Gage down, the cry he hears and the expression (HEY I FOUND ONE) on his face create this pure, horrifying moment. This is his baby that he must relinquish for the second time. Then the kid wanders off and says "No fair" and I want to put my fist through the TV. Does Louis learn his lesson? NOPE.
- 2019 film - Ellie leaves Jud dead, but everybody else gets special treatment...
- In the book - She says "Darling" and then it's over. Obviously the novel leans toward her coming back with all of Louis's terrible secrets (which would include certain marriage-specific closet skeletons) and an axe to grind. And then put in his head. But the more optimistic could choose to believe that Louis is right and that meanness comes with the passage of time - Church supports that theory, since he only came back janky.
- 1989 film - Another example of very good special effects for this era - Rachel looks real nasty when she comes back. (Also another example of how sparing they were with Gage's zombie form). She says "Darling" and then stabs Louis and then it's over. Very "Thriller"-esque sinister ending.
- 2019 film - Ellie's mad at her parents, so she zombifies them too so they can all suffer together. There's still some ambiguity - and according to Andy, a setup for a sequel - in the ending, though. Over the course of the night, Gage is put in a car for his own protection. The showdown at Pet Sematary ends with the other Creeds all turned into zombies. They approach the car Gage is in and you hear the sound of it unlocking, but that's it. If Ellie's stated reasons for killing fools was that they had each committed some terrible sin, then perhaps Gage is exempt. Guess we'll find out in 2 years when they release the sequel!
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