If you haven’t yet seen Pet Sematary with your own two eyes, look away now…
Not just because the film is scary (full disclosure: it’s downright terrifying), but because horror mastermind Stephen King has detailed the alternate ending he pitched to Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer during the throes of production. And yes, it’s riddled with spoilers.
Turns out King’s vision for the Pet Sematary finale is much more upbeat than the one that made it onto the screen – for those of you who have seen it, you’ll know Ellie eventually drags her entire family beyond the veil – as it would’ve resulted in a relatively happy ending for all involved.
Here’s what King told Entertainment Weekly:
I talked about an ending where Gage is walking up the middle of the road. We see dawn, and we hear a truck coming, and think, ‘Oh my God, he’s gonna get greased in the road. That’s how this is gonna end!’ Then at the last second, this woman pulls him out of the road and rescues him, and says, ‘Where’s your mommy and daddy?’ And that’s how you end the thing. I’m a sucker for a happy ending.
Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura admitted that the Pet Sematary creative team had three options to choose from: dark, darker and darkest. They naturally went for darkest and produced one of the most chilling horror finales of the year. But when he watched a rough work-in-progress, King proposed his own alternate third act, and it’s decidedly lighter in tone. Who knew the master of horror was such a sucker for a happy ending?
Looking further afield, 2019 also brings us another King-inspired delight in the form of It: Chapter Two, which is due to pit the Losers Club against Pennywise once more come September.
