Review of Pet Sematary (2019) by Theredsky — 05 Dec 2019

I’ve never read the original novel nor watched the 1989 film but man was this bland. This film is barely over an hour and a half but it feels like two. Pet Sematary is an incredibly boring film. There were aspects I liked about the film but they get buried under this snooze fest.

Most of the acting is pretty bad except from Jason Clarke and John Lithgow. Both do a good job but they don’t really bring anything new to the table. Jete Laurence and Amy Seimetz were pretty bad in this film.

Clarke and Lithgow were able to make the terrible script work for them but Laurence and Seimetz fell victim to it. It also doesn’t help that their characters aren’t that great and aren’t fleshed out a lot.

The make-up effects are pretty great when they are used but they aren’t used in scenarios where they should have been used. If someone gets hit by a huge trailer there probably should be a little bit of blood not no blood at all.

It removes all tension from the scene. They could have just shown some blood and no body. They would have left it up to the imagination of the viewer to think about what that person's mangled body looked like.

The music and cinematography are incredibly bland and generic. The music sounded like stock horror music and the cinematography was basic and boring. The film has a swamp set that they decided to use a green screen background for and it’s really noticeable.

The editing is not terrible but it’s not good either. It just felt weird compared to the other films I have seen this year. The concept of Pet Sematary is definitely intriguing but this film takes that concept and makes it seem very dull.

I was bored out of my mind when I was watching it and was on the verge of falling asleep. I need to watch the original version now to get this out of my mind. Overall, Pet Sematary has an interesting premise based on already existing material but the bad acting, bland cinematography, weak script, and just being uninteresting bring the film way down.