Movie review
April 4, 2019 · 101 min · R
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
The 2019 film follows Dr. Louis Creed and his family as they move from Boston to rural Maine. Their young daughter Ellie discovers a hidden pet cemetery in the woods that can bring the dead back to life with terrible results. The story centers on grief, a fatal road accident, and the horror of resurrection after the father makes a desperate choice.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Pet Sematary.
Woke representation / casting
Main cast is a white middle-class family that matches the rural Maine setting and source novel exactly; no visible diversity emphasis or identity signaling.
Woke political dialogue
Dialogue stays on family life, grief, and scary events with no activist lines or modern political talk.
Identity-driven story themes
Core story is about loss, parental love, and evil forces from an old burial ground with no race, gender, sexuality, or social justice framing.
Western institutional / cultural critique
No activist-style attacks on family, masculinity, tradition, or Western norms; horror comes from personal decisions and ancient magic.
Woke character or canon changes
The film swaps the child who dies from the book's young son Gage to the older daughter Ellie, shifting some emotional weight, but the change reads as a creative storytelling choice with no identity politics or representation motive.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
No anti-woke or right-leaning complaints called the film woke, DEI-driven, or agenda-pushing; all discussion stayed on plot and scares.
Creator track record context
Stephen King has liberal opinions and criticizes conservatives but keeps this horror novel free of activist themes; directors, writer Buhler, and producers work in commercial genre films with no activist histories.
Production
