Streamin’ King: ‘Pet Sematary: Bloodlines’ Sadly Makes The Case That “Dead Is Better” When It Comes To This Franchise

Streamin’ King is grave-digging through the myriad Stephen King adaptations available on streaming. This time we’re watching Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, the brand new prequel to 2019’s Pet Sematary remake based on the ’83 novel.

STREAMIN’ KING: PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES

THE GIST: In a largely new story, we journey a half-century back to spend time with Judson “Jud” Crandall in 1969, having ju(d)st graduated high school and wanting nothing more than to get out of Ludlow, Maine—home of the infamous pet cemetery with the misspelled sign and the darkly magical problematic burial ground behind it. Instead of waiting for an animal to die and return less-than-better, cemeterial hijinks are in play from the get-go.

PEDIGREE: Supporting performances from Golden Globe winner David Duchovny (his fifth role this year, including You People and History of the World: Part II), legend Pam Grier (whose onscreen presence has ramped up since 2019, including in This Is Us and Bless This Mess), and the ever-reliable Henry Thomas, a Mike Flanagan power player also appears this month in his Fall of the House of Usher miniseries. 

Stars Jackson White (Mrs. Fletcher, Ambulance; mother: Katey Sagal, doppelganger: Robert Pattinson) as a dashing young Jud, played in elder form by Fred Gwynne in 1989 and John Lithgow in 2019, accompanied by Forrest Goodluck, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Natalie Alyn Lind, and Jack Mulhern. Directorial debut for Lindsey Anderson Beer (Sierra Burgess Is a Loser), who also wrote it, and who has no less than eight scripts in development including Bambi and a Star Trek. Co-writing credit to Jeff Buhler, who penned the 2019 Pet Sematary remake as 2020’s The Grudge reboot. Scored by Emmy winner Brandon Roberts (Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy), shot by Danish cinematographer Benjamin Kirk. 

As far as streaming service pedigree, Paramount+ is also home to the 2020-21 miniseries remake of The Stand.

WORTH WATCHING FOR CONSTANT READERS? Bloodlines makes this harder to answer than usual. Big Pet Sematary devotee? Really not sure if you should run toward or away from this. Fan of the stories “The Boogeyman” or “Children of the Corn”? Maybe one of those 2023 Stephen King adaptations—both being far from perfect—is a better bet. (Okay, probably not the new Corn.) It’s nice to spend some King-time in the past again, and getting a 1674 Ludlow flashback on top of this Vietnam-era period piece might bode well for Constant Readers who have a tough time just letting the mystery be, the ones who want the origins of SK’s evils even if the mixed results come from filmmakers rather than the author. (It Chapter Two dabbled in this.) Maybe you prefer new character Donna’s explanation: “This whole planet is old, Manny, and it’s filled with good shit and bad, and we don’t know where it comes from.”

This one’s got an overarching villain, very little in the way of possessed pets, and the sweetest character to ever get Sematary’d. (Sorry, Gage.) “Sometimes, dead is better” is used three times, in increasingly well-chosen spots, but feels like a simple franchise catchphrase at this point. The writing does have its bright moments, including “death is different here” and a character saying “sounds like Ludlow’s cursed,” to be met with a simple, “Ludlow’s Ludlow.” While Jackson White’s Jud doesn’t quite wear, say, or do anything that immediately jumps out as a parallel to the Old Man Crandall we know and love, his calm, surveying demeanor does feel true. It’s also likely that whatever your final opinion is on Bloodlines, having spent time with a young Jud will add at least a sprinkle of much-needed depth to either Pet Sematary movie upon rewatch.

As with the 2019 endeavor, the whole “ancient Mi’kmaq burial ground” situation isn’t in the fore. The 17th century flashback’s intention is to shift the responsibility for the town’s curse over to its white colonists, though its execution and implications are questionable. The main cast is fortunate to include the magnetic Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota actress Isabella Star LaBlanc and How to Blow Up a Pipeline breakout Forrest Goodluck, a member of the Diné, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian nations—and for neither character to be any kind of Mi’kmaq ambassador, burden-carrier, or magical problem-solver. These are very brief thoughts, and it’ll be much more valuable to listen to indigenous folks’ takes as the movie makes the rounds.

*BRIEF SPOILER*

Closing with Jud taking his ceremonial place on the front porch with some cigs and brewskis is cool, and so is his mic drop outro: “Believe me when I say, sometimes, dead is better. Stay the fuck out of Ludlow.”

NOTES ON THE OSTENSIBLE SOURCE MATERIAL: King tweeted that “in the book, this is the story Jud Crandall tells Louis Creed to try and dissuade him from using the Pet Sematary. The screenplay takes a few liberties, but it’s a fine story.” 

Book-Jud delivers his sobering tale just past the halfway mark, across 12 pages in chapter 39. Timmy Baterman died in World War II rather than Vietnam, and Judson was already a grown man, standing alongside his fellow Ludlow guardians in the way Jud’s dad does in Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. The whole town knew Timmy had been laid to rest and was aware something was terribly amiss when he started walking “back and forth all day, and for all anyone knew, all night” on his dad’s road with eyes “like raisins stuck in bread dough” and a “pale face, hair all stuck up in spikes, fly unzipped sometimes.” What significantly deepens the backstory is the horrible losses his father, Bill “David Duchovny” Baterman, had gone through, the stuff that already had him looking “like he was dead inside and just waiting for his soul to stink” by the time his boy came home in a box:

This yarn was filmed—in an abbreviated form that differs from both the book and Bloodlines—during 2019’s Pet Sematary production and broken off as a way to hype up the prequel. Here’s Lithgow delivering “The Tale of Timmy Baterman”:

WORTH WATCHING FOR KING NEWBIES/AGNOSTICS? Once spooky season wraps, you’ll likely have watched less horror than you were hoping. Filling a coveted slot with this flick is inadvisable. As much as you love Duchovny, Grier, and/or Thomas, they’re all underused; our younger leads have discernible character arcs, but the heavy hitters don’t. If you have a sweet spot for the old Pet Sematary(s) and like getting different perspectives on the scary stories you already know, Bloodlines is technically a new way into the setting and its mythos. Intermittently brutal on the gore score. Disembodied whispers were ruined by Lost and should be illegal. And at the end of the day, how many truly recommendable narrative films—not docs, animation, experiments—are there that clock in at 81 minutes before the credits roll?

9 STEPHEN KING TIES, REFERENCES, AND MISCELLANY:

1. Jud is rarely seen without a Julio’s Groceries & Deli hat. Here’s King discussing the story’s personal origins in an intro added to the book in 2000: “Julio DeSanctis, who owned the store across the road from us, told me early on that my wife and I wanted to keep a close watch on our children, and on any pets our children might have. ‘That road has used up a lot of animals,’ Julio said, a phrase that made its way into the story. … There was no writing space in the Orrington house, but there was an empty room in Julio’s store, and it was there that I wrote Pet Sematary.” Shoutout to Julio.

2. Will we be digging in that sour earth yet again? Lindsey Anderson Beer—whose production slate is absolutely stacked—told Moviefone, “I shot so much stuff that we could make a 1600s prequel. I actually keep trying to get Paramount to release a featurette or something because we’ve got so much great material from that time period, and it was some of my favorite stuff to shoot because that forest was so beautiful, brutal, and it’s just really interesting stuff.” Additionally, to SFX: “You could do so many movies within the Pet Sematary universe that peel back the onion more and show more and more of what this evil really is, and really comes from, but I certainly have lots of versions of a very extensive origin story in my head.” Lastly, producer Mark Vahradian told Dexerto, “And one of Lindsey’s conceits was that there are these primordial holes in the ground that are almost like—we call it a hell-mouth. … And it’s a way for whatever’s down there to come out in our bodies. She suggested there might be hell mouths all over the planet. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to blow it up into a whole global adventure, but I think you want to explore exactly what this thing is, and what it wants.”

3. The grave labeled “Biffer, Helluva Sniffer” is straight out of the book, though it omits the second line: “Until he died he made us richer.” 

4. Interesting parallels between 1992’s Pet Sematary Two and Bloodlines: neither was adapted from an actual King book; Two kept its director (Mary Lambert) and got a new writer (replacing Steve himself), while Bloodlines kept a writer and got a new director; and they both arrived pretty shortly after their predecessors (three years for Two, four for Bloodlines).

5. Too dimly-lit and quick of a moment to be 100 percent on this, but it does look like a Sematary’d character slashes someone’s Achilles tendon with a scalpel just like Fancy Lad Baby Gage did in the original movie.

6. Crandall is a big accent guy in the book, the ’89 movie, and Michael C. Hall’s audiobook. Jackson White followed John Lithgow’s lead and ditched it. As a Mainer, I call shenanigans on a rural ’60s town devoid of Maine accents. But Lithgow explained the decision eloquently to Slashfilm in 2019, and I think they made the right call: 

“I [tried] a whole reading with a Maine accent. I personally felt that even people who are from Maine, even actors who get it absolutely right—an accent like that kind of takes you out of the story. … He is a character in the pull of a kind of deep, deep regret, deep guilt, great longing, great feelings of loss, love. And because of that, I just felt he had to be a very genuine person. … I can do an accent. But as soon as I start, that’s all you’re listening to.”

7. On the topic of “sometimes, dead is better” being a franchise catchphrase: the nadir appears to have been in Pet Sematary Two, where a woman scream-chants “dead is better!” while melting in a fire. (No “sometimes.” She’s an all-the-timer.)

8. Bloodlines marks three new King-spawned films in seven months, after March’s Children of the Corn and June’s The Boogeyman. If Gary Dauberman’s ’Salem’s Lot could’ve clawed its way up out of that development hell dirt, we would’ve had four. (2019’s Sematary did kick off a year with four, joined by It Chapter Two, Doctor Sleep, and In the Tall Grass.) Also, setting aside a couple 2010s Children of the Corn entries, this is the first SK-inspired film to be filed under his wiki’s Derivative Works section in 17 years, since Creepshow 3.

9. Multi-time Kingverse visitors: Henry Thomas horrified us in Gerald’s Game, then clobbered his cameo as Jack Torrance in Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep (and starred in Midnight Mass, MF’s miniseries heavily indebted to ’Salem’s Lot and Storm of the Century). Jackson White hasn’t done King before, but he’s writing/directing/starring in a project called The Pitch that’ll co-star Owen Teague, who notched a King hat trick by 21 with It, The Stand, and Cell. Samantha Mathis (Kathy Crandall) was on Under the Dome. Returning producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (who also did 1408) has been exploring the Bloodlines territory since at least early 2019, telling the L.A. Times about a potential follow-up, “I had no thinking of making a sequel to Pet Sematary—for me, the only thing that I see is a prequel because we have so much of the book, there’s so much source material that is there that we can draw on.”

CRITICAL CONSENSUS: Another Pet Sematary, another film critic knife-sharpening convention where every attempt at a “sometimes dead is better” joke is made. Premiere SK fan site Lilja’s Library said it “isn’t a movie I’ll be watching again but compared to my expectations and the remake of Pet Sematary that it’s supposed to be a prequel to, it’s a masterpiece.” Bloody Disgusting thought it “dangles themes of generational horrors, of how Ludlow’s founding members and their brush with evil created a heavy burden upon their ancestors,” then “never stops long enough” to dig in. Variety disliked everything except the four-minute sequence that takes us to 1674, saying if Bloodlines had “taken place in this timeline, it quite likely would have justified its existence more than this version does.” The Guardian’s review is more a referendum on “the manic plundering of back catalogues” than a proper takedown, but does get in a good shot calling it “a prequel wanted by few and needed by none.”

A glowing Dread Central writeup found “a sincerity to Pet Sematary: Bloodlines that’s so incredibly King which means two things: the film has a lot of heart and it’s also very cheesy in spots.” Conversely, in a robust critique—one of many to question the movie’s editing choices—Slashfilm contended that it “feels almost totally removed from King’s world.” Mashable thought the “only relationship that truly succeeds” was Manny (Goodluck) and Donna (LaBlanc), who show “a deep care in their every scene, especially in those where they encourage each other to leave Ludlow to do something bigger.” Inverse—which called out the “unending cycle of violent attacks and clunky exposition dumps until the entire affair has been rendered truly and completely lifeless”—should have the last word: “Its lack of imagination would be disappointing even if it was a standalone film, but it feels even moreso given its source material’s fascination with the ways in which tremendous loss can alter one’s psyche forever.” 

All that amounts to 20% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing. 2019’s Pet Sematary stands at 56 percent.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT FOR PET SEMATARY (1983): Dropped a mere half-year after Christine, in tandem with the slender Cycle of the Werewolf, and originally viewed by Uncle Stevie as far too fucked-up to unleash on the masses. For those watching the scoreboard, in the next 12 months he busted out the Richard Bachman parable Thinner and the fantasy tales The Eyes of the Dragon and, with the late Peter Straub, The Talisman.

UP NEXT ON STREAMIN’ KING: 2023’s The Boogeyman, from director Rob Savage and writers Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman.

Zach Dionne writes and records Stephen King things regularly at SKzd on Patreon.