‘Pet Sematary’ directors on rebooting the horror classic: How do you scare Stephen King?

“Pet Sematary” co-directors Kevin Kölsch, left, and Dennis Widmyer make the leap from indie horror to the Stephen King reboot with a twist on the literary horror tale about grief, guilt, parenthood and trauma. First published in 1983, Stephen King’s supernatural chamber tragedy “Pet Sematary” was a dark tale of terror Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch both devoured growing up separately as budding filmmakers and horror fans in Long Island, N.Y. Like scores of King devotees around the globe, they’d read the book as youngsters and pored over the 1989 film adaptation directed by Mary Lambert, which sealed a frighteningly adorable psycho toddler and a cat named Church into the horror cinema lexicon. — “Pet Sematary” director Kevin Kölsch on Stephen King’s reaction “I think Stephen King likes to let people take liberties,” Kölsch said appreciatively of the author during a chat inside Burbank’s Dark Delicacies horror bookstore. The success of Warner Bros.’ record-breaking 2017 horror hit “It,” part of a wave of King adaptations sweeping TV and film, helped push “Pet Sematary” over its final hurdle, he said. — “Pet Sematary” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura The resurgence of the R-rated studio horror film is a boon for filmmaking, said former Warner Bros. executive di Bonaventura, who produced “Pet Sematary” with Mark Vahradian and Steven Schneider and calls Hollywood’s thinking that younger viewers can’t handle more challenging fare “puritanical.” “I feel we have let down the younger audience by not making more R-rated films, period, whatever genre,” said Di Bonaventura, whose films include “Constantine,” Stephen King adaptation “1408,” five “Transformers” movies and the recent hit spinoff “Bumblebee.” “R-rated films for whatever reason tend to be a closer approximation to life, in some respects,” he added.