Get your first look at the remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The onslaught of new Stephen King movies continues and the next on the slate is another adaptation of PET SEMATARY, which will follow "a doctor who moves his family out of the big city to the country. There he discovers that they have moved near a pet cemetery that rests on an ancient burial ground, and when his toddler son is killed in an auto accident, he takes the boy's body to the cemetery, where it is resurrected in demonic form." The Stephen King novel was adapted to the big-screen once before in 1989, and while speaking with Entertainment Weekly, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura teased that, "One of the things about doing a new version now is our understanding of life and death has progressed. But are we more sophisticated about it or less?" I've got a soft spot for the 1989 film, but there's certainly room for improvement; the perfect starting point for a remake.

Entertainment Weekly also released a handful of new images from the upcoming PET SEMATARY, which you can check out below.

Jason Clarke (DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) stars as Dr. Louis Creed, a physician who becomes intoxicated with the ability to restore life after death. "That’s what makes it more than a horror movie," Clarke said. "I was like, ‘Where’s the horror? I’m disturbed.’ That was it for me, I found it insanely disturbing. [King] reaches inside you in some way, he always does. There is great intellect and great subconscious and subtext and thought and reason behind it." Dennis Widmyer, who directed the film alongside Kevin Kölsch, added that Louis is "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."

Dr. Creed is introduced to the mysterious burial ground by Jud Crandall, an old-timer played by John Lithgow. In the new film, Crandall begins to make a connection with the Creed family after spending so many years choosing to be alone. "He’s a loner, and he’s chosen to be alone. His life changed. He was a man whose entire life was wrapped up with his marriage, his wife. And they didn’t have children, but they wanted children," Lithgow said. "In the script there’s this very simple and sweet line, ‘It didn’t work out for Norma and me. We wanted to keep ourselves to ourselves.’ You just know that was a really, really deep relationship. And the loss of that relationship has defined his life ever since." ALIEN: COVENANT's Amy Seimetz also stars in PET SEMATARY as Rachel Creed, but unlike her husband, Seimetz says that the concept of death isn't something her character wants to deal with.

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. Rachel wants her kid to have a childhood and not have to think about death like she did. 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.

PET SEMATARY will hit theaters on April 5, 2019.