As long as visual media is a thing, people are going to adapt Stephen King books. It's just a fact of life by now. But there's no rule that says adaptations have to adhere perfectly to their source material, something the upcoming adaptation of King's book Pet Sematary seems to understand.
Careful, spoilers are below for the original plot of Pet Sematary as well as for the upcoming movie, as shown in its trailer.
Pet Sematary tells the story of a doctor who moves his family to a small Maine town and discovers that a particular plot of land in a nearby forest has the power to resurrect whatever is buried there. After seeing the power work on a cat, he decides to resurrect a human family member who recently died.
And that is the moment the new movie deviates from the book.
The book and 1989 film, which boasts a screenplay also written by Stephen King, have Dr. Louis Creed resurrecting his toddler son Gage after he is tragically hit by a truck. Gage returns from the grave possessed and goes on a pint-sized, murderous rampage that results in further tragedy.
The 2019 Pet Sematary, however, gives the role of the revenant to Creed's eight-year-old daughter Ellie, who looks appropriately terrifying in the new trailer.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pet Sematary directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch as well as producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura explained that the decision to have Ellie as the supernatural star was a practical one.
"Gage is so young, you can’t really do that much with him,” the producer told EW, "...this way, we’re able to really get underneath our affected child. We’re able to get into the psychological horror of a child [coming back] because of her age."
The directors also added that it was more feasible to have 11-year-old actor Jeté Laurence deliver iconic and creepy lines from the book, lines a three-year-old actor wouldn't be able to perform without resorting to puppetry.
They also mentioned that the 1989 adaptation used a doll for some of Gage's scenes and wanted to avoid any comparisons to Child's Play, which features a killer doll and also has a remake coming out in 2019.
Diehard fans might take issue with such a big change to King's plot, but Pet Sematary's trailer looks so darn good and the explanation is so thorough that it's hard to imagine any sane person holding Ellie's new prominence against the film. Then again, this is the internet.
