2019’s ‘Pet Sematary’ movie compared to the book

In the book: Gage runs out into the street as a truck is barreling down the road. Louis just misses catching him and Gage is fatally hit.

In the movie: Louis tries to get rid of the family’s cat, Church, after it returns from the dead. He tells an upset Ellie the cat has run away. Ellie sees Church in the road during her ninth birthday party and goes to pick him up. As she’s in the road, the truck comes speeding along. This time it breaks. Unfortunately, the trailer on the truck pops off and slides down the road colliding into poor Ellie.

Directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer explained their reasoning for changing the child who’s killed, and honestly it makes sense story wise when they explained to Entertainment Weekly they felt it was something that has been seen on screen already.

“Much of how they shot the first [movie] was a doll,” Widmyer told EW. “It’s creepy and it’s effective. But we’ve now seen ‘Child’s Play’ and we’ve seen the little kid trying to kill, and it’s effective when done right.”

Yes, it’s creepy to watch a toddler go after his family. But it does seem a bit unrealistic he could overpower both Jud Crandall and his mother. In the books, a possessed Gage stabs Jud to death with his father’s scalpel and somehow hangs his mother from a rope.

The remake uses a conversation Ellie has in the book with her family about her fear of death and what happens when one dies to perfectly set up the twist in the remake. The nine-year-old is more adept and agile for the task of taking on her family in the new film.

“There are things that we put back in that, if people didn’t read the book, they’re going to think they are things that we’ve changed [from the 1989 film],” said Kölsch. “If you read the book, these are things that are taken right out of it that just didn’t make it into the original movie because they probably couldn’t have a 3-year-old do it.”