Movies - TV
The Creepy Hidden Meaning Behind The Painting In Pet Sematary
By DEVIN MEENAN
There are many unsettling things about Mary Lambert’s adaptation of “Pet Sematary” by Stephen King. One of the more subtle features is the strange painting in the film.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lambert revealed the creepy historical origins of the painting and how it fits with the film’s theme of parents grieving their dead children.
When Rachel returns to her childhood home where her sister Zelda had died, there’s a painting of a child in a gown and a top hat, with a cat by their feet.
Lambert explained that this piece of set dressing was modeled on real nineteenth-century American paintings of children who died in infancy, commissioned by their grieving parents.
She said, “So many children died at an early age, and they wouldn’t have any photographs of them, or pictures, so they would dress them.”
Lambert added, “That was my inspiration for how Gage comes back, because that’s a form of bringing somebody back from the dead.”