First Photos Released For The Remake of Stephen King's PET SEMATARY and New Details
Thanks to EW, we have our first look at the upcoming remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. There are seven photos here for you to look at that feature Jason Clarke as Dr. Louise Creed, John Lithgow as Jud Crandall, Amy Seimetz as Rachel, and of course, that damn evil cat, Churchill.
The movie is being directed by Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch, who are best known for the 2014 horror-satire film Starry Eyes. This is the synopsis for Pet Sematary:
“Based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary 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.”
Below you’ll find the photos along with some additional information for the film:
Stephen King's website describes, "Stephen was serving as a writer-in-residence at the University of Maine at Orono and living in a rented house in nearby Orrington that bordered a major truck route which frequently claimed the lives of dogs and cats. In the woods behind his house, local children had created an informal pet cemetery. One day, his daughter’s cat was killed by a passing truck. Stephen was faced with the task of burying the cat in the pet cemetery and then explaining to his daughter what had happened.”
"It was on the third day after the burial that the idea for a novel came to him.”
Co-director Widmyer described Louis Creed as “a guy who thinks he has death figured out. ‘I see death every day, I work in an ER. Don’t tell me about death, I understand death.’ But he doesn’t understand death when it’s dropped onto his lap. He’ll do whatever he can to undo it. It’s sort of like the science world meets the supernatural world.”
When talking about the character Rachel, Seimetz says, “Rachel went through something extremely traumatic when she was younger with her sister, and she freezes up when death is talked about. She doesn’t want to face it and doesn’t want her daughter to go through the same thing. It’s a hard topic for her to discuss. Not just because she wants to protect her kid, but also because she’s protecting some part of herself as well.”
I’m sure all all remember her sister Zelda, “the twisted, agonized figure whose emaciated body was corkscrewed with spinal meningitis. The flashback to her grim, short life scarred readers and moviegoers almost as much as it did Rachel.” In regards to how Zelda will be used in the remake, Widmyer adds:
“It’s more accurate to the book, I’ll just say that. In the original movie, it’s a 21-year-old guy in drag playing it, and in the book, as you recall, it’s a 10-year-old girl.”
Yikes… He goes on to say:
“You go, ‘How do you top Zelda? It was big and scary and awesome, but if you think about the reality of the Zelda situation, what that would do to a family, with her wasting away in this bedroom, and a younger sister being frightened of her older sister’s debilitating illness, that on its own is pretty scary.”
He goes on to say that they are hoping “the grounded nature of that horror would actually be scarier than a supernatural version of it. The nurse, the medical equipment, what that room would feel like as a layer of dust went on everything. How that would seem from the perspective of an 8-year-old, going into that room to bring food to her, and how scary that would be.”
No one imagines the loss that awaits this family, which includes mom Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and toddler brother Gage (played by twins Hugo and Lucas Lavoie), who has a habit of wandering too close to the busy country road outside their new home.
The sweetness of the Creeds is one thing that makes King’s story so unsettling.
Seimetz says, “To understand why loss is so tragic, you have to understand why life is so beautiful.”
When talking about his character Judd, Lithgow says, “He is a good man, but he is a good man with troubles in his life. And he’s grown up with some real demons.”
When talking about the story, Widmyer says:
“This book is about death and talking about death and grief, and the pet cemetery is the first stage of that. It’s almost like by not communicating about death, the chain reaction of the entire movie happens.”
Co-director Kevin Kölsch added:
“Having a pet die is a way that a lot of kids learn about death, and how to deal with death for the first time. It kind of helps you accept death as a natural part of life.”
Pet Sematary hits theaters on April 5, 2019. Are you excited about this remake? This is one of the scariest stories that King has written, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this new movie turns out!