Film Review: PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES (2023): A Good Cast Can’t Save This Prequel From its Problematic Plot Development

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Review

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) Film Review, a movie directed by Lindsey Anderson Beer, written by Jeff Buhler, Lindsey Anderson Beer and Stephen King and starring David Duchovny, Henry Thomas, Jackson White, Natalie Alyn Lind, Forrest Goodluck, Isabella LaBlanc, Jack Mulhern, Samantha Mathis, Pam Grier, Christian Jadah, Steve Love, Karl Graboshas, Vincent Leclerc, Glen Gould, Matt Holland and Ted Whittall.

Lindsey Anderson Beer’s prequel, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, doesn’t have the sense of overwhelming dread that the 1989 Stephen King adaptation, Pet Sematary, and its 2019 remake possessed. Those films flourished on the dark premise of burying dead kids who came back to life after they were put six feet under in a cemetery that was meant for pets. There are some similar disturbing themes explored here but the ones the movie chooses to go with are ultimately trite and boring. There’s not much to admire about Beer’s lackluster picture. It rests on a cast of talented performers who seem to be telephoning their performances in.

Set in 1969 in Ludlow, Maine, the movie revolves around a young Jud Crandall (Jackson White) who became the overseer of the pet cemetery found in the later films. This character plays a pivotal part in the action here but White’s characterization is only sometimes on the mark. He doesn’t have the dark personality necessary to play a part that was done by great actors such as Fred Gwynne and John Lithgow (both of whom played older versions of Jud in other Pet Sematary movies).

Henry Thomas plays Dan Crandall. This is the same Thomas that played in one of the biggest box-office hits of our time, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial but Thomas’s work in the movie is, disappointingly, mediocre at best. He’s killed off late in the film as he’s trying to say something that the audience will be glad he never got to say. The same negativity can be addressed towards the other big star of the movie, David Duchovny, who plays Bill Baterman. Duchovny tries to express emotions in a key scene and tries his hardest but, ultimately, the actor comes up short considering Duchovny’s fine talents which have been showcased in other parts that he’s played.

A scary scene comes in a hospital when a female character named Donna (Isabella LaBlanc, the only member of the cast to give a successful performance)’s feet are discovered to be dirty by (if I remember correctly) Jud’s girlfriend, Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind), but when Norma goes to clean off the dirt, the skin of Donna’s feet proceeds to come off. It makes for a gruesome image and helps move the plot along a bit. That scene leads to a couple of interesting chills and thrills but the movie soon continues to go down a path to nowhere.

The supporting members of the cast also include Pam Grier (taking on this role for no particular reason) as a peculiar character known as Marjorie Washburn and Samantha Mathis in a thankless part as Kathy Crandall whose role has completely escaped my memory from the time I spent watching the movie (which just ended forty minutes ago) to now as I am writing this review. Forrest Goodluck does merely OK with the role of Manny, a close friend of Jud’s. Jack Mulhern’s Timmy Baterman, a war vet friend of Jud’s who becomes the antagonist of the picture after an evil possession, is used to create a few minor scares but is also quickly forgettable in the grand scheme of things.

“Sometimes dead is better” is the tagline which was used for the 1989 picture and it’s used in the new film so many times that it feels like the filmmakers and the writers are beating a dead horse. Flashback sequences set hundreds of years before the current action in the movie are mundane and totally unnecessary. They go many years back in time but do little to progress the development of the story happening in the film’s current timeline. There are a few creepy masks thrown into the film for good measure but even they turn out to be more lame than frightening. If you want some blood and guts, the movie offers that but without enough of a plot to justify the graphic gore, it feels more gratuitous than not.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines also doesn’t have an ending that successfully ties the film to another one of the movies in the franchise. Whereas movies like Saw X and The Exorcist: Believer at least make the effort to give fans a cameo or something that will remind audiences of other earlier films, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, instead, feels like an overt attempt to reel fans in only to have nothing to offer them. It’s basically a bait and switch. And, who thought this movie would hardly feature any pets (dead or otherwise)? It’s difficult to recommend a film when it doesn’t even try hard enough to please its fan base.

Rating: 4/10

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