Movies
Second ‘Pet Sematary’ Trailer Breaks Through the Sour Ground and Introduces Plot Twist
Almost exactly 30 years after Mary Lambert turned Stephen King’s Pet Sematary into a feature film, Paramount is unleashing Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch‘s new adaptation this coming April, and the second trailer crawled its way out of the grave this morning.
Much of the trailer is made up of footage we’ve already seen, but what’s notable about this second look at the film is that it spoils a plot twist that sure would’ve been nice to have been surprised by come April. So that’s your warning to avoid this one entirely, if you were hoping to go into the new Pet Sematary as blind as possible. The problem with too much marketing, eh?
Oh and also check out a new poster underneath the trailer.
Twins Hugo Lavoie and Lucas Lavoie play Gage Creed, with Jeté Laurence as Ellie Creed. Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz are our new Louis and Rachel Creed, with John Lithgow as Jud Crandall. Obssa Ahmed is playing Victor Pascow, with Alyssa Brooke Levine as Zelda.
In Pet Sematary, adapted by Jeff Buhler…
“Based on the novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary follows Dr. Louis Creed, who, after relocating with his wife Rachel and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbor, Jud Crandall, setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences.”
Return to the Pet Sematary on April 5, 2019.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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