Movies
“Pet Sematary: Bloodlines” Needs To Adhere To Its Own Advice
Sometimes a movie sucks. Sometimes you watch a movie when you know a movie is going to suck.
“In 1969 a young Jud Crandall and his childhood friends band together to confront an ancient evil that has gripped their hometown of Ludlow.”
Director: Lindsey Anderson Beer
Writers: Lindsey Anderson Beer, Jeff Buhler, Stephen King
Starring: Jackson White, Natalie Alyn Lind, Forrest Goodluck, Isabella LaBlanc, Henry Thomas, Jack Mulhern, David Duchovny, Samantha Mathis, Pam Grier
Release Date: October 6, 2023
IMDB
Sometimes a movie sucks. Sometimes you watch a movie when you know a movie is going to suck.
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) is such a viewing experience. The Paramount+ original film inspired by Stephen King’s 1983 horror book is a predecessor to the haunting story, but the eeriness of the original is substituted with pop scares and a horrendously shallow experience. The makers of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines should have taken a lesson from its own ethos and let the dead thing be dead, for if you revive it, pain and suffering will be abundant.
A young Judson Carndall (Jackson White) is excited to leave the small town of Ludlow, Maine with his girlfriend Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind). Jud has seen his childhood neighborhood slowly slip into something he doesn’t recognize, and relationships with past friends are frayed to say the least.
Unfortunately for Jud, an ancient evil steeped in Ludlow’s lore has reappeared and is determined to run the town and all of its residents to the ground. Jud learns hard lessons from his father Dan (Henry Thomas) and must reconnect with old friends Donna (Isabella LeBlanc) and Manny (Forrest Goodluck) and find a way to keep the unnamed undead evil at bay for the sake of those he loves and the place he grew up.
How did this malevolent force become reborn and revitalized? Bill Baterman (David Duchovny) watched his son leave for Vietnam, and saw him come back in a casket. Using the dark magic within the rotten soul of Ludlow, the overcome with grief father did the unthinkable and crossed the line, unearthing secrets and trauma that brought Timmy back to life, but to call him living is something else entirely.
Pet Semetary: Bloodlines is not a good movie, and I would not recommend it to anyone. Rather than recanting the poor aspects of this particular film, I am going to propose a different story that allows the story to take a completely different direction.
There is a flashback sequence in Bloodlines that shows the Native Americans letting colonial era settlers know that the ground is sour. How about we set a movie entirely in that era? I am not saying make something as good as The Witch (2015), but perhaps using a utterly different setting than post 1960 Maine would have tickled different eerie senses.
How did the Native Americans know the ground was sour? Using the spiritual Native American aspect of their culture to shed light on the malevolent force would be a different way to approach the story.
In Bloodlines, the evil is unfurled once again because of a tragedy in Vietnam. TImmy died in Vietnam, and his dad doesn’t want to live with that. Vietnam is again the crux of the issue for a King (inspired) story. It is used often, and it makes sense for when he grew up, but seeing how Bloodlines is not actually a King story, it wasn’t great how the movie used it as a foundational piece.
Going in with pessimistic feelings is not a fair way to watch a movie, but even if you are the most optimistic movie watcher in the universe, it is hard to ignore the poor quality of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. Speaking for myself, the only reason I pressed play on Bloodlines is because I am on a lifelong quest to watch all Stephen King films.
Now I am left with a question as to whether or not this movie counts as one of King’s. He wrote the story from which it is based on, and the movie shares his title, but this isn’t a script that he penned or had direct thought on. I will address this question when it comes time to go through the extensive library of films based on King’s adaptations, and thankfully for me that’s years from now.
If you do want to watch Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, it is streaming on Paramount+.
STANKO RATING: F+
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