Interview: Screenwriter Jeff Buhler on Creating a New Generation of Creepy Kids with PET SEMATARY and THE PRODIGY

Screenwriter Jeff Buhler is quickly becoming the King of Creepy Kid Stories in 2019. Between his work on The Prodigy and Pet Sematary, as well as the upcoming Grudge reboot, suffice to say that if you want to see tiny humans doing and saying messed up things that will give you nightmares, Buhler is definitely your go-to guy right now.

While at the recent press day, Daily Dead sat down for an in-depth conversation with Buhler, who talked about everything from the pressures of adapting Stephen King to finding new ways to make kids creepy in horror movies again to exploring new depths in the relationship between Louis (Jason Clarke) and Rachel Creed (Amy Seimetz) to the challenges of screenwriting for a feline co-star, and more.

Look for Pet Sematary (2019) in theaters everywhere this weekend!

[SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen any of the Pet Sematary (2019) trailers and are unaware of the major change to this iteration of King’s story, then the following interview might be a bit spoiler-y.]

Congratulations on a great year so far, Jeff. I loved The Prodigy and I think you did a great job of navigating some really tough waters here with Pet Sematary, too. So, coming into this project in particular, what kind of weight is on you when you're working with material from Stephen King of all people?

Jeff Buhler: I try not to get too overwhelmed by it because I'm a geeky fan about his work, so I also have the same feelings that everybody else does, which is like, "Oh, why are you changing this? Why are doing this?" I've gone through all of that myself. But once you get your head as a writer around who the characters are and what the story is that you're trying to tell in the movie, then that stuff kind of goes away. I've adapted Clive Barker’s work, I've adapted George R.R. Martin, and I've adapted Stephen King. I also did the reboot of The Grudge. These are all projects that [have] a very strong and vocal group of fans to them, so you just get used to tiptoeing around the sacred cows and being careful.

How different is your process, then, when you're looking at material that you're adapting versus something like The Prodigy, where you can go in there and have some fun, because there's nothing really holding you in?

Jeff Buhler: The Prodigy was an idea more than a film when I first came onto it. We wanted to do something with reincarnation, and it was from that that we built the story. And this is the parallel to Pet Sematary—at the crux of it, it's a parent making decisions about their child, because of their bond with their child. And the question The Prodigy asks is, "How far would you go to save your kid?", and Pet Sematary digs into some similar territory, too, in a sense that you've got parents grappling with big decisions here. Louis is making some big choices, and it's like a cousin to what we were exploring in The Prodigy in the sense that it explores how far would you go to have one more day, or how far would you go to be able to tuck your kid in one more time?

And I think that's a really powerful idea that anyone can relate to, even if you don't have kids. You've been a kid, you have parents. Anyone who has a family knows those bonds and how precious they are. So I think that once you find that identifiable emotional anchor, then it becomes easy to do the plotting and the stuff around it, because you know what the rudder is for the story.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm curious, when you're going through this story in particular and you're looking at the novel and trying to figure out the things that you want to make sure you guys get on the screen versus the things that are probably better left on the page, what was that process like? And I have to applaud you for bringing in the Wendigo to this version.

Jeff Buhler: Yeah, the Wendigo, Norma, Victor Pascow, Zelda. There were versions of the script that had much less of all of those things. And at the end of the day, Stephen King's a master at putting a lot of different supernatural elements in a story and getting away with it because he's so good at it. As moviegoers, we're used to seeing movies about one thing. You're given one pass, like there's a world with zombies in it or there's a world with vampires in it. And Stephen King as a writer asks you, or challenges you, to accept a world where there's a lot of weird shit going on.

And I think what we had to balance is that if you put absolutely everything in there at the level that it is in the book, it doesn't make for a great movie because it starts to clutter up what the story's really about. And so we had to do a soft touch on some things and then a harder touch on others. I was very pleased with the way the Zelda storyline and the Victor Pascow storylines came out, though. I think we have a great Victor Pascow.

Can you talk about pushing things in this third act? Obviously, I don't want to ruin anything for our readers. But you guys take some really big risks, and I love that it all pays off.

Jeff Buhler: Well, in the past year or so, I have built a name for myself making kids do terrible things.

And say terrible things, too [laughs].

Jeff Buhler: And say terrible things, yes [laughs]. But I don't know what that is. Maybe I'm working out some stuff. I think we all very early on knew that the choice to have Ellie be the central child in terms of what happens in the story was the right one, but you never know how it's going to turn out. You're reading it on the page and you're imagining it, and then when Jeté [Laurence] came into the picture, we all knew we were fine, because she's so good.

And she's so fun to watch, too. She's a real scene-stealer. So that was a huge relief, and then the final breath of relief was when Stephen King saw the film the first time and said, "That was smart. That works for me. I think that switch is better for the movie, and thank you for focusing on the psychology of the family because that's what this story's about." He was really pleased with that element of it.

So you can move plot stuff around and you can flip-flop characters and do these little screenwriter-y things. But at the end of the day, we're telling the story of the book, and we're very true to the spirit of it and many of the specific plot points and dialogue and all that stuff. So I don't think fans of the novel will be disappointed by what we’ve done.

I really like how you fleshed out the relationship between Louis and Rachel here, too. I mean no disrespect to the other filmic version of this story when I say this, but I actually think the relationship here between them is more thought out and cohesive, in terms of creating a loving marriage between these two characters. Rachel also is invested more in the third act as well—was there some reasoning behind making those tweaks, in your eyes?

Jeff Buhler: In the book, it's really Louis' story. You're in his head the whole time, and that's what makes writing a novel a different experience. You can be in the head of the characters and hear their thoughts and know what they're feeling and all that stuff. What we wanted to do with the film, because you're not able to get inside one person's head when you’re making a movie, is to make sure that everyone's emotional arc was well-rounded and felt like it was important to what was happening. We didn't want to have a Rachel that was just there to run away and come back and scream and run around. And that's not necessarily just because she's a female character, either.

There's a danger in this film when Louis starts to make really what I would call bad choices, and as an audience member, you've got an unreliable narrator now. You've got someone who's leading you through a world that you don't trust, and that's good for horror because it keeps you off balance. But we needed Rachel to be built in a way that she could come back into the story and help be the anchor of that final drive of what takes place and to be the voice of reason.

There's always a point in most horror movies where you want to scream out, "Why are you going up there? Don't go in the fu--ing basement," or whatever. And she's the character that comes back in and can say that stuff. It's great to have her there because it's very grounding.

I also think you guys did a really fantastic job of tapping into—and it sounds so weird to say this—but the character of Church. Because in the book he's such a constant presence, and while we did get that in the other film version, this cat in this movie becomes this really menacing harbinger that's just everywhere, and I really loved it. I'm curious, how much can you write on a page for a cat versus how much they then make those decisions on set? I don't know if that even makes sense, but I thought the way you guys were able to characterize this cat was very interesting.

Jeff Buhler: No, it does. Because you write stuff in the script that says, "Oh, the cat does this," or, "The cat looks over here," or "Louis looks at the cat, and the cat looks back." And you never know if it's going to be ridiculous when it plays onscreen. We knew that we didn't want to have a lot of puppet or CGI work with the cat, so it was really important to write action for Church that could be performed by a real cat. He's not crawling up the walls, and I never wanted to break reality with Church, either. I didn't want people to roll their eyes and be like, "Oh, he's doing crazy supernatural things."

And then we got really lucky. We had great animal wranglers and we had a wonderful set of cats. There were five of them total, but the two main cats, Leo and Tonic, portray Church for the bulk of the film. They had different skill sets. One could land on a mark and throw a look at you, and then the other one just looked like a badass motherfu--er [laughs]. And that badass cat, I wanted to take a picture with it, and the wrangler was like, "Don't. Do not. Don't. That cat is not holdable." He would sit there and he just looked so mean. It was a lot of fun to see what those cats were able to do.

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In case you missed it, check here for Daily Dead's previous coverage of Pet Sematary (2019), including more interviews with the cast and crew, set visit highlights, and Heather's SXSW review!