Pet Sematary

Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestseller is given a fresh lease of life in Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s re-imagining of this wild, powerful and disturbing classic.

Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two young children Ellie and Gage move up from Boston to a rural community in Maine where he is starting up a medical practice. Their neighbour Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) welcomes the family and gives them a tour including the woods adjoining their house, a mysterious burial ground built and maintained by the local children… a Pet Sematary.

Jud warns the couple against the eerie place but after a series of tragedies strike the young family, Louis cannot resist travelling there, inadvertently setting off a chain reaction that unleashes an unspeakable evil.

Always a dependable actor, Clarke does exemplary work here. As he becomes overcome with grief, you come to understand why he desperately searches for a way to keep his family together.

Dr Darren Elliott-Smith (University of Hertfordshire) will introduce this screening with an exploration of horror reboots.