Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
Lindsey Anderson Beer’s stab at Stephen King digs up something rotten in the state of Maine.
Staring death in the face: David Duchovny and a ghostly Jack Mulhern
Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Given that this prequel to Pet Sematary arrives as a Paramount+ original, it will be hard to discern how viewership compares to the 2019 remake, which generated a remarkable $113m at the global box office. This time around, the backstory of John Lithgow’s character Jud Crandall from the 2019 stinker is dredged up for another round of resurrected loved ones. As with Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s previous entry, director and co-writer Lindsey Anderson Beer takes it all far too seriously, plotting a mouldy derivative of the 1983 Stephen King novel–which intentionally misspelt cemetery to the misery of editors everywhere.
Set in 1969, some 50 years before the events of the previous film, young Jud Crandall (Jackson White) is gearing up to enter the Peace Corps with girlfriend Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind). Having avoided the Vietnam war himself, news arrives that childhood friend Timmy Baterman (Jack Mulhern) has just returned home from the fight. On their way out of Ludlow, Jud and Norma encounter Timmy’s dog and circumstances which thoroughly derail their plans. Located just 20 miles or so from Derry (the town plagued by Pennywise in King’s It franchise) Ludlow presents yet another reason to avoid the Kingverse state of Maine.
Though Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is billed as “the untold chapter”, the source material only amounts to three pages in the novel, so there’s frankly not much to tell. The scraps are fleshed out with the forced addition of indigenous characters Manny (Forrest Goodluck) and Donna (Isabella Star LaBlanc), as well as a foggy subplot about Manny, Jud, and Timmy all being boyhood Stand by Me-style friends. After four film adaptations, the truth about the cemetery and what lurks beyond in the woods still remains mostly a mystery. Rather than exploring the mythology behind the land or revealing the book’s Wendigo, the film turns to pure formula, trotting out all of the usual tropes in bloody paint by numbers fashion. A brief flashback to 1674 is perhaps the most intriguing part of Bloodlines, highlighting the more promising idea of an indigenous-focused origin story about the creation of the cemetery as a means of protection against the woods’ sour soil. Alas, this marks a new low in screen adaptations of King.
It’s hard to muster empathy – or fear – for characters whose fate has already been revealed and sealed in a previous film. There’s also very few actual pets in Pet Sematary, with the bulk of the narrative resting on a grieving father that’s never shown grieving (David Duchovney). There was certainly something more to be explored within the father/son theme between Timmy and Bill, Jud and Dan (Henry Thomas) — as well as Manny’s lack of a father figure. Meanwhile every creak and crack are drawn out to the extreme in a foley artist focused soundtrack. In the 2019 film, Jud relates the story of burying his dog in the woods and his surprise when the neighbour’s cat comes back evil. With the events of Bloodlines, Jud’s future stories and actions don’t exactly add up. It seems to have taken quite a lot of trial and error to come to his prophetic conclusion “sometimes dead is better.” You said it Jud!
CHAD KENNERK
Cast: Jackson White, Forrest Goodluck, Jack Mulhern, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn Lind, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Samantha Mathis, Pam Grier, David Duchovny, Glen Gould.
Dir Lindsey Anderson Beer, Pro Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian, Screenplay Lindsey Anderson Beer and Jeff Buhler, Ph Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, Pro Des Adam Scher, Ed Ken Blackwell and Jan Kovác, Music Brandon Roberts, Sound P.K. Hooker.
Paramount Players/Di Bonaventura Pictures-Paramount Pictures.
83 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 6 October 2023. Cert. 15.
