“Dark F***ing Movie!” PET SEMATARY Set Visit Part 3: Conclusion

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Apr 4, 2019

Regular readers of Dread Central know that I was lucky enough to visit the set of Pet Sematary when it was filming outside of Montreal last Summer. What struck me profoundly at every turn was just how seriously everyone involved was taking the project. While it would have been easy to play up the most salacious elements of the novel by Stephen King for this adaptation, those behind the scenes and in front of the cameras were always striving to make something deeper and more universal than moviegoers might be expecting.

Related Article: How Sweet to Walk on Sour Ground! PET SEMATARY Set Visit, Part 1: The Directors Speak

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, for example, told us “I thought [Pet Sematary] was a great idea because it is. I don’t know if it’s my favorite Stephen King book, but it’s close if it’s not that. Because it deals with something that’s utterly timeless, which is death, and our relationship to it. And as a father, that really interests me.”

But if you’re worried producers sacrificed scares for drama, don’t be. Pet Sematary co-director Dennis Widmyer promises: “It’s a dark fucking movie.”

Related Article: Is Jud Crandall Actually a Villain in PET SEMATARY 2019? Set Visit Part 2: Reading Between the Lines

“It’s Pet Sematary,” Widmyer continues. “A lot of Stephen King’s work is… sentimental. The good guys win. Even at the end of The Shining, Wendy marries Dick Halloran. People forget that, but Stephen King has a heart. And a lot of his work has a heart. This one, he put in a drawer for a like a year and he felt really disturbed by what he had written. So, you have to make that story. I think it’s very emotional, very psychological; it’s very grounded in its horror, and it goes pretty far. It’s really not a studio film.”

Kevin Kölsch, Pet Sematary’s other co-director, explained the duo’s approach to adapting the novel: “We’re fans of Stephen King and the book and the original movie, so we want it to be respectful to that. When we came in, obviously this was a project that, unlike everything else we’ve done before, we didn’t write this one ourselves. We worked with co-writer [Jeff Buhler] to actually try and get closer to the book than what the original script was. There was a lot in the book that we were always big fans of, or things that didn’t even make it into the original movie, that we always wanted to do, and we worked hard to get those into the script. So, that has been our approach: To be faithful to the book. But the best remakes stay faithful to the essence [of the source material], not necessarily every single thing that happens.”

Producer Mark Vahradian had an approach similar to the directors. “It’s actually a family drama,” Vahradian says of the Pet Sematary. “There are a lot of interesting thematics. There’s this notion of nature and the power of nature and a family that moves from the city closer to nature, into the woods. They’re unfamiliar with that kind of savage power and don’t really know the dangers of being outside of civilization. It’s technically a horror movie, and it has scary stuff, but that’s generally at the back end of the story, and it’s really about dealing with all these other issues, human choices, and behaviors. So, I think this is much deeper than most of the horror that’s out there, and I think even most of the horror literature that’s out there. And that was what was always so exciting for us.”

The actors were especially aware of the emotional intensity that would be needed to plumb the depth of Pet Sematary. “You know, when you make a horror film,” John Lithgow, who plays Jud Crandall, explained, “the emotions have to be so authentic and everything that happens in the story has to really come out in various deep emotional needs from the characters. And that’s built in to the way [Widmyer and Kölsch] have reimagined this story. You believe these feelings and you identify strongly with these characters and their needs, their longings, their feelings of love and anger… and regret.”

Pet Sematary finally lands in US theaters nationwide tomorrow, Friday April 5th (tonight in many markets). Give the film’s synopsis and trailer a look-see below.

Synopsis:
Dr. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, relocate from Boston to rural Maine with their two young children. The couple soon discover a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near their new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his neighbor Jud Crandall, setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unspeakable evil with horrific consequences.

Will you be checking out Pet Sematary this weekend? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!

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