Starcrawler’s “Pet Sematary” cover is a fuzzy, laconic garage-punk take on the Ramones classic written for the 1989 film, and it plays over the end credits of the 2019 remake.
Los Angeles band Starcrawler (fronted by Arrow de Wilde) don’t try to out-Ramones the Ramones. They slow the attitude just enough, thicken the guitar, and lean into the song’s already-creepy “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”-adjacent riff so it feels more like a midnight graveyard shuffle than a straight-ahead punk blast. De Wilde’s vocals sit somewhere between sneer and drawl—less Joey Ramone’s deadpan bark, more haunted-teen-in-a-horror-movie. It’s reverent without being a carbon copy, which is exactly what a remake soundtrack needs.
The original Ramones track is still the definitive version: tighter, catchier, and inseparable from the first movie.
Starcrawler’s take is sludgier and a little sleepier in places, which some listeners hear as a feature (it matches the 2019 film’s grim, muddy tone) and others as a miss. Either way, it does the job the credits require: after two hours of dead-not-better family tragedy, you get a hooky, slightly unhinged rock song that lets you walk out of the theater humming instead of just sitting there stunned.
Worth a listen even if you skip the remake. The original still wins, but this cover earns its spot.
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