Directed By Lindsey Anderson Beer

Starring – Jackson White, Natalie Alyn Lind, Forrest Goodluck

The Plot – In 1969, a young Jud Crandall (White) has dreams of leaving his hometown of Ludlow, Maine behind, but soon discovers sinister secrets buried within and is forced to confront a dark family history that will forever keep him connected to Ludlow. Banding together, Jud and his childhood friends must fight an ancient evil that has gripped Ludlow since its founding, and once unearthed has the power to destroy everything in its path.

Rated R for horror violence, gore and adult language

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines | Official Trailer | Paramount+ – YouTube

POSITIVES

Even after a franchise that spans four films and a respective television series, the creative process never stops growing for the depth of the story, and in such Beer as a screenwriter has imbedded an extensive lore and history to both the town of Ludlow, as well as Pet Sematary itself, which doesn’t just phone this home as another evidential remake. Instead, the addition of the war in Vietnam, as well as the cultural society of a small town involved in such is fleshed out in ways that make them truly integral to the characters and their respective actions, but also serves as a mere starting point to the tortured history of the town, which feels more explored and visually realized than any other chapter previously in this series. Beyond this, Beer’s debut directorial effort conjures an unnerving instability in atmospheric dread that cements a sense of purpose and belonging of this installment right alongside its various predecessors. Because Beer focuses so prominently on the thickness of the dread that is so effortlessly established in her direction, there’s an immersive quality to the engagement that makes the audience feel like a presence in the small town community, Where even despite the lack of insight that the characters involved have to what’s haunting them, we coherently interpret an overwhelming ominous layer of dread that persists just below the surface. Beer’s direction also zeroes in on some vitally impactful sound schemes in creaking anatomy, conveying a stirring consciousness in the air of ambiguity, which Beer taps into repeatedly with the many things that go bump in the night.

NEGATIVES

At the end of the day “Bloodlines” is ultimately and unfortunately defined by being a product of streaming service mediocrity, which would rather fill a content quota than produce something game-changing for the fate and durability of an iconic franchise. This is most felt in the arduous inconsistency of the film’s structure, which as a prequel to the Jud Crandall character of the original film, completely eviscerates tension and uncertainty of character fates, simply on the rules and realities of other installments. Beyond this, the script commits the felony of answering too many questions about the lore and tortured history of Ludlow, which wipes away most of the mystique and ambiguity of this mystical place, where anything seems possible. While I did appreciate the film diving into hundreds of years of curses to the grounds it takes place upon, it simply wastes too much of the 82 minute run time allowance on these outsider elements, in turn undercutting the focus of the grief and hope associated with the afterlife, to which so much of this franchise’s emotional merits are pulled from. Beyond the script, the movie’s gore factor, with its most colorfully expressive pallet to date, are appalling in the combination of special and practical effects that it pulls so forcefully from. Aside from the lack of believability with the designs, and how skin and muscles stretch in this depiction, the film is overloaded in the desire of physical horror to psychological, which in turn keeps this from ever truly feeling like a product of Pet Sematary, and when combined with the abundance of unstubtly predictable jump scares, the film isn’t able to generate the longer lasting frights, which permeate mentally within the passage of time. I also found the acting to be dry and lacking the kind of commitment that makes these characters stand out on-screen. Part of the problem certainly lends itself to the flatly one-dimensional outlines that these characters are given by a script that downright refuses to spend any time developing them, but I certainly don’t think the ensemble are guilt-free, especially with noteworthy icons like David Duchovny, Henry Thomas and Pam Grier phoning it in. The main cast are certainly no better, as Jackson White is emotionally subdued and restrained to the point that he echoes the same quirks and ticks as the character had in both the novel of the same name, as well as the 1989 and 2019 film adaptations of the character, and the complete void of chemistry that he shares with Natalie Alyn Lind doesn’t help in driving the urgency of their conflict, or the investment factor in wanting to see either of them survive. Finally, I found most of the editing and corresponding camera work to be counterproductive to the building blocks of the film’s momentum, primarily when it chooses to take the intrusive route that often breaks believability in the context of the conflicts established. For the framing choices, this involves a levity that comes with characters in trapped peril, who with this angle are given an easy route of escape, and for the editing, it leads to these abruptly improper cuts directly in the middle of character dialogue, which forcefully squeezes the emphasis in the breakneck pacing that the film has established for its storytelling.

OVERALL
“Pet Sematary: Bloodlines” is a soulless corpse of its psychologically stinging predecessors, despite being one that takes some refreshing turns of originality with the focus of its narrative. Lindsey Anderson Beer’s debut direction does faithfully capture the dread and unnerving mystique of this sinister small town, but very little else in flat performances, weak technical merits, and a rushed execution that constantly undercuts our accessibility to the finished product, echoing the ages old sentiment of the franchise, in which dead is better than what comes back.

My Grade: 3/10 or F