One of the most nightmarish movie characters of all time is no doubt Zelda from Pet Sematary, the deathly ill sister of Rachel Creed who was actually played by male actor Andrew Hubatsek in the ’89 big screen adaptation. Zelda, who suffers from spinal meningitis, makes a brief but unforgettable appearance in the film, and she’s coming back for the re-adaptation.
As we recently told you, young actress Alyssa Brooke Levine has been cast as our new Zelda, and directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch teased the character’s return to EW.
“It’s more accurate to the book, I’ll just say that,” Widmyer told the site, referring to the handling of Zelda. “In the original movie, it’s a 21-year-old guy in drag playing it, and in the book, as you recall, it’s a 10-year-old girl.”
Widmyer continued, “You go, ‘How do you top Zelda?’ It was big and scary and awesome, but if you think about the reality of the Zelda situation, what that would do to a family, with her wasting away in this bedroom, and a younger sister being frightened of her older sister’s debilitating illness, that on its own is pretty scary.”
“The grounded nature of that horror would actually be scarier than a supernatural version of it,” he added. “The nurse, the medical equipment, what that room would feel like as a layer of dust went on everything… how that would seem from the perspective of an 8-year-old, going into that room to bring food to her… and how scary that would be.”
At this time, we have not yet seen an image of the new Zelda. But stay tuned.
