Stephen King's Pet Sematary got another adaptation for the big screen after its 1989 predecessor gave audiences the heebee jeebees.
Even though the original adaption garnered generally favorable reviews, it didn't rank among King's better horror films, like The Shining or Carrie, but it did gain cult status for its twisted premise.
The new version directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer that was released over the weekend is also experiencing mixed reviews, even with this reincarnation featuring a plot-point gender twist.
Audiences are divided over the the remake but over on Twitter, they can agree on one thing, and it involves that darn cat.
Take a look at the trailer for Pet Sematary, below, and see if something about the featured feline catches your eye.
Pet Sematary (2019) - Trailer 2 - Paramount Pictureswww.youtube.com
Katie Rife, a senior writer from the AV Club, noticed:
"I just keep thinking about whose job it was on set every day to dirty up the cat. Like, 'oh, yeah, I have to go in early tomorrow, I have to rub some Vaseline and coffee grounds on this cat.'"
Church, the Creed family zombie cat, is no puppet in the movie — at least for most of the scenes that we know of.
So where do we sign up?
Widmyer told Entertainment Weekly that Church was played by eight cats, and training them to act demonic was easier than expected. In fact, he called them a "pack of divas."
"Little did we know how hard it was going to be to find, like, eight cats who looked exactly like that," he said, referring to the Maine Coon known for being sociable and having long hair and bushy tails.
"It was really just about finding the trainers, and then we tasked the trainers with now finding a lot of cats that could do that, and to their credit they did. I mean, they say you can't train a cat, and Kevin and I always joke around that our apartments are living testament to that, because our carpets and our couches are torn to hell, because we can't train our cats not to scratch them."
Each cat featured different idiosyncrasies and were used in specific scenes that played to their strengths.
"But these cats, they were able to train them and every cat had a different specialty. There was the cat that could hiss, the cat that could jump, the cat that could stare… They were like this pack of divas on set."
"You know, the cat would get on set and have to get acclimated, so all the actors would have to shut up and just kind of let the cat sniff everything for like ten minutes. So, we just sat there, and watched the cat."
Edible makeup and catnip are tricks of the trade.
How did they ever pull this one off?
Two of the cats have their own Instagram pages. This is Tonic, and he cleans up well.
And this is Leo.
Looks like purr-fect casting.
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