Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – In 1969, a young Jud Crandall has dreams of leaving his hometown of Ludlow, Maine behind, but soon discovers sinister secrets buried within and is forced to confront a dark family history that will forever keep him connected to Ludlow.

My Take – Though not as popular as his other works like ‘It’ or ‘The Shining’, ‘Pet Sematary’ is indeed renowned author Stephen King’s most profound novels. A book so bleak that King himself refused to publish it for years, due to a story that had none of the expected glee or the shock value inherent in them, but once you understand the elements you have been exposed to, you realize how it is far more grisly on how it approaches horror.

Adaption wise, the 1989 cult classic was as good as it could be, and the 2019 remake was decent enough for a single watch, even though it made quite a few changes.

However, while the sequel to the first adaptation, Pet Sematary Two (1992) confirmed the notion that original follow-ups to Stephen King adaptations are rarely ever any good, this prequel to the Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer 2019 directorial hammers down that thought all the way, thanks to an extremely pointless prequel that has barely any cinematic value.

Marking the directorial debut of Lindsey Anderson Beer, who co-wrote the film with Jeff Buhler, the film certainly has some interesting ideas as it tries to explain the mythology of the titular Pet Sematary, but also never finds a way to fully flesh them out. Making it a less visually engaging and murkier entry that adds very little to the lore.

This one is just a lackluster attempt to tell the story of young Jud, which is an essential piece of character development in King’s 1983 novel, but no justice is done here. To make matters worse, the screenplay is bland, the characters are unappealing, and none of the actors, which includes the likes of David Duchovny, Samantha Mathis, Henry Thomas and Pam Grier, get anything decent to do. The film is a total disaster in almost every respect.

Set in 1969, the story follows a young Jud Crandall (Jackson White) who is preparing to leave his rural town of Ludlow, Maine with his girlfriend Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind) in order to join the Peace Corps after failing to secure a spot to ship off to Vietnam in the draft lottery, potentially because of a word put in by his parents Dan (Henry Thomas) and Kathy (Samantha Mathis).

But right when the two are hitting the road, a vicious encounter with the aggressive and disheveled dog of Jud’s friend from his younger days, Timmy Baterman (Jack Mulhern), who has allegedly just come back from the war with an honorable discharge, leaves the two stuck in town for a few days more.

Noticing that Timmy’s changed – his bones crack in unsettling fashion every time he moves, he stares with dead eyes, and how his father Bill (David Duchovny) is apprehensive about letting him be seen in public, Jud tries to get to the bottom of Timmy’s mysterious behavior before something even worse happens.

Linking up with their common childhood friend, Manny (Forrest Goodluck), Jud is forced to confront a dark family history that is connected to the ancient Miꞌkmaq Tribe burial ground in the wilderness surrounding the town.

It’s another case of filling in gaps that were fine as is, the story leaping all the way back to the 1670s for an uninspired backstory attempting to make some point about colonialists and stolen land before flashing back forward to make some point about the Vietnam war. But writer-director Lindsey Anderson Beer isn’t able to find a way to make it all feel cohesive enough to make sense, vague nods toward inherited trauma and political callousness tossed aside for a rote quest-led final act.

The shock of the original story came from the emotional calamity faced by a grieving family in tandem with the accumulating events that led to Louis reviving his dead son (or daughter as done in the remake).

Here, we’re stuck with a much more tedious, sterile extrapolation on such a gut-wrenching tale. It takes the base elements of the narrative and mangles them into a familiar supernatural horror about stopping a possessed killer.

Here, director Lindsey Anderson Beer and co-writer Jeff Buhler make some odd choices in their approach to tell the story. First is the decision to abandon any attempt at a mysterious build-up: we see in the very first scene that Timmy’s dad Bill is burying him in the ancient burial ground, and we see Timmy attack the dog as he emerges from the ground. So we know the whole time that Timmy and the dog are both reanimated corpses, while it takes the people of Ludlow a while to figure this out.

In the novel, Jud is among the lead characters, and the film apparently aimed to cover a couple of chapters from the book focusing on this particular era of his life. One would think that could be interesting, if it was justifying its reason for existing on film. But it does not. What we get is a painful 84 minute runtime with a story that tries to be engaging, but falls flat. There should be an added layer of despair to Jud’s predicament knowing what lies in store for him years down the road, but the script narrows him down to the point of anonymity.

While the writing here is an unimpressive mess, the same cannot be said about Beer’s direction. I kind of felt that she wanted to tell the story in her own way, with certain convictions, but failed because of the utterly terrible writing and sloppy editing.

Performances wise, Jackson White makes for a good lead and is well supported by Natalie Alyn Lind. Forrest Goodluck and Isabella Star LaBlanc are good in their roles, and Jack Mulhern is effective in making Timmy quite creepy. Sadly, the rest of the cast which includes the likes of David Duchovny, Samantha Mathis, Henry Thomas and Pam Grier are thoroughly wasted. On the whole, ‘Pet Sematary: Bloodlines’ is a lackluster prequel that adds nothing to the lore.