PET SEMATARY: Bloodlines

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)
Directed by: Lindsey Anderson Beer
Written by: Jeff Buhler, Lindsey Anderson Beer
Starring: David Duchovny, Henry Thomas, Jack Mulhern, Jackson White, Natalie Alyn Lind, Pam Grier, Samantha Mathis

Stephen King’s classic story gets a prequel movie, that suggests the franchise, much like the dead on show….should have stayed buried…..

Some horror movies, should never really become a franchise.

When you have man in a William Shatner mask, killing babysitters, or a man in a Ski Mask, hunting down camp staff, then you have the blue-print for further movies, even though they may end up with ridiculous entries like a rapper shouting “Dangertainment” while demonstrating Kung Fu or the bogeyman getting a rebrand in deep space, causing chaos on a spaceship.

The 1989 Stephen King movie adaption Pet Sematary is fondly loved by horror fans and is prove that a story needed to be told, can be done perfectly in one single take. The 1992 follow up sequel with Edward Furlong, while underrated for some, flopped massively at the cinema and the remake from a few years back, a greenlit project to jump on the box office success of IT, hardly convinced fans to throw away their affection of the original, even though a much darker ending, saved it from being a complete waste of time and effort.

But somehow, much like the dead, that spooky Sematary refuses to die as we are now back in the land of Ludlow, Maine, in which we now get enter the prequel territory as we catch up with Jud Crandall, 20 years before the original tale, a character once played by Fred Gwynne and later by John Lithgow who is now a young man (Jackson White), a young man trying his best to have a better life but like in most horror tropes no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t get out of the town he was born in, even having a bird smash through his car windscreen as he drives past the town sign with his girlfriend Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind) by his side.

If you have read the novel, then what we are getting is The Timmy Baterman story, that was mentioned in the original film, the dangers that Jud saw first-hand in burying anything in that Pet graveyard, but while the idea may seem good on paper, Bloodlines fails to deliver on its concept, offering cheap scares and some bland story-telling that fails to excite and worse of all, underusing the talented cast on offer.

The likes of Pam Grier and David Duchovny are totally wasted through out with the former X File legend, playing the father of Timmy (Jack Mulhern) a young man returning from the Vietnam war a changed man, and whose Dad makes a fateful decision that impacts the life of Jud in more ways than one.

Its the kind of prequel which offers a backstory, us horror fans never really asked for and and worse of all, offers nothing new to the well known material. Its not scary in any shape of form and while it serves up some gory moments, the lack of tension and a failure to build on any sort of suspense, will make even the most loyal Stephen King fan start to feel that much like this franchise, the dead should really stay dead….

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