Pet sematary

PET SEMATARY I Jason Clarke digs deep to confront death in Stephen King’s darkest tale…

The grave matter of making Stephen King’s bleak book.

You definitely have days where you have to mark up your calendar and go [pulls sour face],” says Jason Clarke of the shoot for Pet Sematary, an adaptation of Stephen King’s bleakest and most disturbing novel. “It’s dark material, but that’s part of what makes the book special. And it’s what attracted me – just the whole ‘what if?’ I mean, what would you do if it was there?”

The ‘it’ the First Man actor is referring to isn’t, in fact, the Pet Sematary, a graveyard in the Maine woods where children have long said goodbye to their beloved animals, but rather an ancient burial ground beyond, which was once used by the indigenous Micmac tribe. Having moved from Boston to the sticks with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and young children Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo Lavoie), doctor Louis Creed (Clarke) hears of the burial ground’s power to reanimate the dead from his neighbour, Jud (John Lithgow). Such tall tales are to be laughed at over a cool beer on the front porch, but things seem very different when an almost unbearably harrowing tragedy befalls the family.

“The book is very graphic when [King] talks about digging up [SPOILER],” says Clarke, with a shiver. “It’s really upsetting. When he opens the casket – oh my God, you’re looking at [SPOILER REDACTED]. This isn’t just scary stab-stab, it’s what can become of our souls. It’s almost a different, weird version of the Frankenstein tale – if you bring something back or you build something and it has consciousness, what do you do with it? In playing God, what can we become? It’s a journey to hell.”

King’s 1983 novel was previously adapted, rather well, by Mary Lambert in 1989. It was around that time that a 20-year-old Clarke picked up the paperback in Australia, having read King’s first Dark Tower book, The Gunslinger, on the tail of Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings. A huge shock awaited – “I read it and it was very scary”

– and you can be sure the darkness is wholly embraced in this new film version by Starry Eyes directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer.

“When I read it this time it was very disturbing,” Clarke says. “I read the script and then the book and it’s more disturbing than scary. What happens at the end is horrific.” He shivers again. “It’s so fucked up.”

‘it’s more disturbing than scary. what happens at the end is horrific’ Jason Clarke