Most remakes are pointless, though there are instances they offer something the original didn’t.

Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch’s remake of Pet Sematary is definitely the former.

That it’s so similar to the 1989 movie–directed by Mary Lambert–which makes sense since they’re both based on the same source material.

This leads to the question: Why does this movie exist?

Visually speaking, it looks better than Lambert’s version; it’s certain better acted.

Yet despite that the first is significantly more effective as a horror movie.

Which isn’t to say that it isn’t watchable–it is–but being that it lacks the bite, the edge of the first version why would you even bother if you had a choice?

And the worse thing is, Kölsch and Widmyer are genuinely talented directors, as anyone who’s seen 2014’s Starry Eyes can attest.

Compared to that movie (or Mary Lambert’s interpretation), there’s no burial ground that can reanimate this corpse.