PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES (2023)

Studio:   Paramount
Director: Lindsey Anderson Beer
Writer:   Lindsey Anderson Beer, Jeff Buhler
Producer: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian
Stars:    Jackson White, Forrest Goodluck, Jack Mulhern, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn Lind, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Pam Grier, David Duchovny

Review Score:

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Summary:

In 1969, Jud Crandall makes a disturbing discovery about his family's connection to the cursed burial ground that haunts the small farming town of Ludlow, Maine.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In Ludlow, Maine, in 1969, Jud Crandall and his girlfriend Norma prepare for a move to Michigan to join the Peace Corps by making a trip into town. While donating a box of personal belongings to a thrift store, Jud briefly reminisces over a childhood photo of his estranged friends Timmy Baterman and Manny, the latter of whom is of Native American heritage.

Jud has an awkward run-in with Timmy Baterman's father Bill, who makes a cold comment about how Jud has suspiciously managed to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Bill claims his drafted son Timmy recently returned from Vietnam as a war hero, although Bill secretly resurrected his dead son by burying him in the cursed Micmac burial ground hidden beyond the local pet cemetery.

The next day, Jud and Norma begin their drive out of town, but are stopped in the middle of the road by Timmy Baterman's dog Hendrix behaving strangely. Jud and Norma escort Hendrix back to the Baterman farm where they see Timmy also acting oddly. Timmy accuses Jud's father of colluding with a doctor to prevent Jud from being drafted. Hendrix suddenly mauls Norma without provocation. Timmy stands still for several crucial seconds before finally firing a gun to call off his dog.

Jud rushes Norma to the hospital. Outside the building, Jud encounters Manny, who was at the same facility to treat a wound suffered while smoking weed in a sunflower field with his sister Donna. After acknowledging their broken friendship, the two of them discuss Timmy's unexplained oddness.

Jud returns to the Baterman home to find Timmy standing entranced over a mutilated animal. Bill sends Jud away after Jud expresses his worry that Timmy is somehow "different."

Back at his house, Jud explains to his parents Dan and Kathy how Norma's injury will keep them in Ludlow for a few more days. Jud asks his father why he has been so insistent on Jud leaving town, and if it is true that Dan has secretly schemed to keep Jud out of Vietnam. Dan only says that he acts to protect his son, and warns him that leaving Ludlow is essential.

Mail carrier Marjorie Washburn has an uncomfortable encounter with Timmy and Hendrix. Afterward, Marjorie calls Mayor Hannibal Benson to tell him she believes Bill Baterman used the cursed burial ground to resurrect Timmy. Hannibal proposes a meeting with Dan Crandall and Sheriff Anderson, who are the other secret stewards sworn to protect the burial ground's curse from spreading. Prior to that meeting, Timmy has Hendrix viciously attack Marjorie, but she kills the dog and survives.

Timmy interrupts a party at Manny and Donna's house. Guests observe Timmy's unsettling behavior as he taunts Donna about her prophetic dreams while warning that both siblings will die in Ludlow. After Timmy leaves, Donna describes her worrisome dreams that Timmy inexplicably knew about while she and Manny discuss the town's cursed soil and speculate that something sinister is speaking through Timmy.

Jud wakes in the night to find disturbing evidence of Timmy skulking around outside. After Jud shows Manny that his keepsake photo of the three childhood friends now has all of their faces burned out, the two of them decide to research town records to learn more about Ludlow's cursed ground.

Meanwhile, Timmy attacks Donna at her house, chases her into the sunflower field, and kills her. Timmy subsequently buries Donna in the cursed soil.

At the local church, Reverend Havering shows Jud and Manny the old journals that detail Ludlow's settlement of Mi'kmaq territory in 1674. Jud and Manny learn natives reportedly fled the area due to widespread crop rot. Unknowingly, town founder Ludlow was buried in sour earth that caused him to resurrect as a murderous cannibal. From a Crandall family journal, Jud further discovers his ancestors were among the original settlers, and his bloodline has long been entrusted with the curse's caretaking.

Jud confronts his father for the truth. Dan takes Jud on a tour of the pet cemetery where he explains how their family became part of a pact to stop the curse from spreading.

Norma realizes Donna became a resurrected corpse when Donna goes on a killing spree at the hospital. Working with Timmy, Donna takes Norma captive.

Dan confronts Bill, who finally accepts that his murderous son must be stopped. Jud and Manny join the two men at the Baterman farm in hopes of rescuing Norma and Donna.

Marjorie Washburn, Hannibal Benson, and Sheriff Anderson join the hunt for Timmy. However, Timmy kills Hannibal in a barn, hacks Marjorie with an ax, and murders Sheriff Anderson, too.

Jud and Manny discover Donna is a ghoul, but Manny refuses to let Jud shoot his sister. Dan enters the room to shoot Donna instead, but Donna stabs Dan to death, which compels Manny to shoot Donna in her eyes to kill her.

Bill escorts Jud and Manny into his cellar for safety. The three of them discover a subterranean tunnel where Timmy took Norma. Bill finds Timmy in the tunnel, but when he is unable to act against his son, Timmy tears out Bill's intestines.

Jud and Manny pursue Timmy into Little God Swamp. Manny becomes caught in a tripwire trap set by Timmy, but he manages to fire a flare gun into Timmy's face during Timmy's faceoff with Jud. Timmy's body sinks into the swamp. Norma reunites with Jud.

Resigned to carry on his family's legacy, Jud makes the difficult decision to remain in Ludlow. Norma chooses to stay with Jud while Manny leaves town instead.

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Review:

A prequel to the Stephen King story that inspired it, "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" takes place in 1969. Presumably, this setting retroactively re-dates Mary Lambert's classic "Pet Sematary" adaptation (review here) to this film's release period of the 2020s rather than that film's release year of 1989. Otherwise, we're supposed to believe Jackson White, an actor in his twenties who plays young Jud Crandall here, will somehow morph into 60-something Fred Gwynne in just twenty years. That would be an even further disbelief leap than Ewan McGregor aging all the way into Alec Guinness in the nine-year timeline span between when the "Obi-Wan" TV series ends and "Star Wars" begins.

On the topic of Gwynne, his Munster-sized lifters are challenging to fill since few performers become so inseparably associated with certain roles in the endearing manner in which he immortalized Jud Crandall and his iconic "dead is better" drawl. John Lithgow fared respectably in the 2019 remake (review here), as expected of a beloved veteran with his accomplished pedigree. Come to think of it, perhaps this is actually a prequel to that adaptation, which would make more sense to the timeline, even though it’s a weird choice to replace the stone-cold classic by building on the lukewarm remake instead.

Jackson White doesn't possess presence on Gwynne or Lithgow's level, few actors do, though he slots in admirably enough as a college-aged Crandall who is both physically capable and emotionally kind, a combination that makes Jud a stout centerpiece, if underdeveloped. It's fair to say that as fictional horror royalty goes, Jud Crandall may be up there as a lauded king, or at least a prince, so taking up his torch is more likely to lead to jeers than cheers no matter who carries the flame. White holds his own as much as the slender script allows. Anyone willing to give him a fair shake should agree any limitations to his range are more rooted in the movie's sometimes-peculiar construction than anything ordinarily associated with a poor performance.

The real spotlight stealer of "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" is David Duchovny as Bill Baterman, a grieving father whose drafted son Timmy died tragically in Vietnam, making Timmy a prime candidate for resurrection in the infamous Micmac burial ground. Duchovny doesn't have a whole lot to do in the film. No one does (a little more on that later). That's why it's crucial for an actor of his caliber to tackle the task of adding emotional gravity as someone who can sob sincerely, and can spit cold snark at Jud for suspiciously avoiding a fate similar to his son. Only so many scant minutes are afforded to minor moments. Duchovny makes the most of his. Plus, it's always refreshing to see him doing something different from Fox Mulder.

Bill bringing back Timmy kickstarts events that throw the little Maine farm town of Ludlow into tumult. Jud and his girlfriend Norma were on their way to Michigan to join the Peace Corps, until an unfortunate encounter with Timmy's Cujo-esque canine turns them around. Timmy's unsettling behavior also sinks its hooks into Manny, who was the third friend in their childhood triumvirate, as well as Manny's older sister Donna. Getting to the bottom of this mystery will teach Jud the truth about his family's connection to Ludlow's horrible heritage, and his family's role as caretakers of the sour soil's sinister secret. It will also make him and his loved ones prime targets for Timmy's murderous machinations.

At the time of publication, "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" sits at a pitiable 22% aggregate critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. User scores aren't much better, holding at 44% on RT and 4.6 on IMDb. Scanning a couple of the quotes on top at RT, one will find the words "bland," "disappointing," "second-rate," and "forgettable." Headlines from the IMDb user pans shout things like "Worst Pet Sematary yet" and "Please kill the franchise!"

However, I don't follow how the film supposedly deserves such extreme negativity. Like any lower-tiered horror movie, even one that's part of a notable franchise from a major studio, "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" does check a few boxes in the Con column. Legitimate gripes include, but are certainly not limited to, questionable editing where concurrent scenes with no narrative imperative to be juxtaposed are nevertheless spliced together simply so one can jump its time or place by inserting a shot from the other one first.

Wholly unnecessary characters also clutter up the roster. The overpacked cast list, which includes Samantha Mathis as one of Jud's parents even though she isn't important enough to earn her own title card, reeks of "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" previously having higher aspirations that were scaled down for one reason or another. For instance, the sheriff and mayor are part of a clandestine pact that illustrates Ludlow's longstanding legacy regarding keeping the curse in check, but for the purpose of streamlining the story even more, they could have easily been composited into Pam Grier's underused mail carrier without any material difference whatsoever.

Yet none of these are significant, or even uncommon, cinema sins to justify single stars or scores colored red. No matter how low anyone thinks this goes, "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" still isn't "Amityville: Bloodlines." I suspect some bad apples piled on hyperbolic hate because of offense at the cheeky reference to imaginary "bone spurs" keeping Jud out of Vietnam, or some misperceived queerness in the form of male friend Manny joking, "why are you sexy?" to question Jud coming at him shirtless in cold sweat.

The upside to the wonky editing style and amputated side stories is the movie moves swiftly, clocking in at just over 80 minutes when front and end credits aren't counted. As far as I'm concerned, brevity is one of the qualities a straight-to-streaming horror movie should strive for. Some differences may be subtle, yet they're notable enough that "straight-to-streaming" is a category above what "straight-to-video" used to mean in the pre-digital age, and "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" meets what lowered "straight-to-streaming" standards should realistically be given the relative budget and Paramount+ brand.

"Serviceable," "average," and other room temperature terms hit bigger films harder. "Jurassic Park" sequels can't be those things, but a "Pet Sematary" prequel can. Scares come from an old hat. Plot points follow a predictable progression. Except, isn't that hitting for par on this kind of course? It would be foolish to try rewriting a book Stephen King has already written, literally and figuratively, so I'm okay with "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" following formula to play it safe in this case. Expecting more out of the movie is expecting more than the movie ever expects out of itself. Sometimes, dead is better. And sometimes, mediocrity is fine, so viewers might want to adjust their anticipation accordingly.

Review Score: 60

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