Pet Sematary (2019)

Pet Sematary arrives in 2019 as the second pass at Stephen King's novel, a remake that conducts itself like a well-maintained sedan. It has a cat, a truck, a rural Maine road, and a father who cannot leave grief alone. The film moves through its obligations with professional courtesy: jump scares at regular intervals, John Lithgow doing sturdy work as the neighbor who should have kept his mouth shut, and a child actor asked to be unsettling on command. Nothing in the runtime stops to instruct us on how to live.

A single gesture deserves a note. The role of Victor Pascow, played by a white actor three decades ago, goes here to Obssa Ahmed. The change is made quietly, without a speech attached, and the film never asks us to notice. That is either confidence or indifference, and the distinction matters little on screen. Elsewhere the ledger stays clean. The Mi'kmaq burial ground functions as a spooky shelf for the plot to reach toward, with no interest in the people who might have a claim on it. Rachel's sister Zelda, ravaged by spinal meningitis, is staged for maximum dread, which is the opposite of a body-positive statement.

By the standards of the current decade, this is a restrained vintage. The film wants to frighten us and then send us home, and it does both with a shrug. There is no sermon in its pocket, no lesson about consumption or carbon, no revisionist account of anything. We are left with a competently made chiller that respects the audience's desire to be startled and then left alone. A modest, unpretentious pour. Note the faint trace of casting initiative on the finish, and nothing else.