Pet Sematary: Bloodlines addresses Stephen King fans’ biggest gripe

02.10.2023 - 17:11 / polygon.com

This preview of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines comes from a Q&A after the movie’s world premiere at the 2023 Fantastic Fest film festival.

Fans of Pet Sematary, one of Stephen King’s all-time scariest books, have had a major gripe since the novel was first published in 1983. The action centers on a secret burial ground in the woods near a small Maine town, where anything interred in the earth returns to life. This is a horror story, so naturally, there are consequences.

But new-to-town protagonist Louis Creed is willing to risk those consequences, once he finds out about the place from an aging local man, Jud Crandall. Why the hell does Jud invite Louis to use the pet cemetery’s powers when he knows from experience what will happen? Readers have been asking that question for 40 years now.

Lindsey Anderson Beer’s new prequel movie, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, makes Jud’s actions seem more irresponsible and unlikelier than ever. But as Beer and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura explained in a Q&A after the film’s world premiere at Fantastic Fest in September, they did set out to address Jud’s behavior in a way that would finally fill in what King fans consider the book’s biggest plot hole.

[Ed. note: Very minor spoilers ahead for Pet Sematary: Bloodlines’ broad setup and inspiration. This preview avoids any specific plot spoilers for the new movie.]

Bloodlines is a solid enough addition to the Pet Sematary cinematic library. It isn’t as scary as Mary Lambert’s 1989 movie adaptation, starring Dale Midkiff as Louis and (more memorably) Fred Gwynne as Jud. But it’s better paced and performed, and significantly more thought seems to have been put into making it a human story, as well as a creature feature. It’s also better on all fronts than the dismal 2019 remake with Jason Clarke as Louis and John Lithgow as Jud. And it adds some substantial new lore to the Pet Sematary world that answers some unanswered questions in just enough detail to be intriguing, without dissipating the tension the way so many horror spinoffs do. Most significantly, it clarifies the relationship between the Micmacs, the town’s local natives, and the cursed burial ground.

At the same time, the movie fills in Jud’s backstory in ways that make his later relationship with Louis feel stranger than ever. At the movie’s Fantastic Fest premiere, Beer described her script as a substantial rewrite of initial drafts by 2019 Pet Sematary co-writer Jeff Buhler, who has a co-writing credit. The film was largely inspired by chapter 39 of Pet Sematary, where Jud tells Louis the story of Timmy Baterman, a Vietnam vet killed in action, then placed in the burial ground and revived by his grieving father, Bill. (David Duchovny plays Bill in Bloodlines, and