What Do You Think About That Big Plot Change in the New PET SEMATARY Movie? The Directors Explain

Yesterday we got a new trailer for the latest big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, and anyone familiar with the story knows that a major change was made.

In King’s original story, the three-year-old boy Gage Creed is killed by being run over by a truck and is brought back to life after being buried in an ancient Indian burial ground that has supernatural properties. However, when he comes back… he’s evil.

In this new vision of the story, it’s Gage’s older sister Ellie who is killed and brought back. I’m still not sure how to feel about this, because Gage’s death always hit me so hard, and it was so utterly terrifying to imagine such a young boy come back so evil. But the directors of the film felt that Ellie being killed off makes more sense. Co-director Dennis Widmyer explained in a press kit:

“That twist was in the script when we came on board, and straight away you could see that it was one of the smartest things in the script. It was new and fresh but also absolutely kept the essence of the novel. One of the things we liked about the novel is that it’s always the character of Ellie who is asking about these things. She’s asking about her cat dying one day and asking all these big questions. So, it felt right for it to be her, to echo these questions to her Dad, to resolve these earlier conversations that we’ve had. It felt like a nice way to connect that theme.”

Co-director Kevin Kolsch added:

"You’ve got to be sure that you’re making changes for the right reasons, not just a shock factor. And changing it to Ellie makes absolute sense to the story.”

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura explained his thoughts on the matter saying:

“I’ve been lucky enough to have worked on something like 80 different book or graphic novel [adaptations]. And I think the truth of any success is that if you treat it literally you get in trouble because it feels very static and stale. But if you make too many changes then you’ve lost the essence of what it is. This treads the perfect line. It is about embracing what the book is trying to say, and not trying to change its tone, its rhythm, and its perspective, while also evolving things forward.”

The director also explained in an interview with EW that it’s hard to make a toddler come back from the dead and have it be scary. I thought the first movie did a great job of pulling it off, but Widmyer pointed out, “Much of how they shot the first [movie] was a doll… 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, but …”

I don’t know, I think they could’ve pulled it off if they wanted to, but it sounds like they just liked the new direction of the story.

I'm not sure where I stand on the story change. While I’m a little disappointed that they changed it, I’m going to keep an open mind and see if it ends up working as well as they say it does. So, I’m going to hold off on judgment until after I see the movie. But what do you think about the change?

Regardless of the change, the movie still looks scary as hell and I’m excited to see it! Pet Sematary lands in theaters on April 5th.