There are times when nostalgia and a really good trailer get a lot of excitement for a movie when it is remade. Unfortunately, this remake wasn’t able to live up to the hyped up expectations that it made for itself.  

While the original Stephen King adaptation of ‘Pet Sematary’ in 1989 favored more slow cooked anticipated fear, the remake traded that in favor of cheap jump scares that were so easily predicted that people in the theater remained unfazed.

Jason Clarke does an okay job with conveying the emotions of a father who is grieving the loss of a child, but the poor acting of Jeté Laurence is more obvious. For being the central horrific character in the movie, her character is so un-scary and dull that when the film is supposed to pick up its pace towards the end, it just comes to a slow halt.

The scariest part of the film comes not from the main plot, but the sub-plot that lays with the wife Rachel, played by Amy Seimetz. She struggles through the movie with the haunting memory of her sister who had died when she was young. This small side story would make a great movie in itself, but only makes up maybe 10 minutes of screen time.

The movie doesn’t move fast enough for a scary movie based on jump scares.

While it isn’t a horrible movie, ‘Pet Sematary’ falls victim to poor timing as well. Many people were still awestruck from Jordan Peels film ‘Us’ and were too focused on that film to pay any attention to ‘Pet Sematary’ whatsoever.