Original Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert recently tweeted that she originally had an idea for a sequel to *her* adaptation that would focus on Ellie, the only surviving member of the Creed family. She didn’t get to make that sequel, of course. Instead Lambert’s Pet Sematary Two, released in 1992, featured all new characters.
In her own words, Lambert tweeted, “I wanted [Pet Sematary Two] to be a direct sequel about Ellie, but [the film I made] was the script the powers that be wanted.”
Speaking with Bloody-Disgusting by phone about the 30th anniversary 4K UHD release of Pet Sematary, Lambert dug deeper into her original plans for Ellie Creed.
“What I really would like to do would be Ellie coming back as a young woman to Maine with her cat to find out what happened to her parents,” Lambert told us.
“She’s in Chicago at the end of the original movie. I’m pretty sure her grandparents wouldn’t have sent her back to live alone in that house after all that had happened, so I would just take the point of view that Ellie grew up in Chicago but what happened to her parents was not discussed very much. I would have jumped ahead to have her be a young woman. I would have her go back to Maine with her cat.”
Ellie’s pet featured prominently in Lambert’s concept for a sequel to the original classic.
“Actually I have a whole idea about feral cats because I love cats so much,” Lambert explained. “The idea that there’s a feral cat community there that eventually takes her to find her father.”
Perhaps if Pet Sematary Two had matched the box office of Pet Sematary, Lambert would have had free reign to do whatever she wanted for a third film. Now, this year’s new Pet Sematary film makes a change to the source material that would preclude following Ellie further.
“That’s one thing I would like to do but it probably won’t happen because the remake doesn’t go there,” Lambert said. “It wouldn’t be a good sequel for the remake. It would be a good sequel for the original.”
In the (underrated) Pet Sematary Two, Edward Furlong plays a boy who has lost his mother and has to live with his father. When he learns about the Micmac burial ground, he’s tempted to violate the laws of nature for slightly different motivations than Louis Creed. Looking back, Lambert is happy with the film that she ultimately ended up making.
“I love the one that we made,” Lambert told us. “It’s very different in that it also went to a place that I really enjoyed going with. It was from the point of view of an adolescent boy as opposed to the point of view of a father who has relationships with his children, relationships with his wife, relationships with the community. This is about two crazy teenage boys who, again, make some bad judgments. It’s really about making bad judgments which teenage boys are famous for. Many movies are based on the bad decisions of teenage boys.”
Pet Sematary is now available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital formats.
The new Pet Sematary opens April 5.
