Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)

Directed by Lindsey Anderson Beer. Starring Jackson White, Henry Thomas, Forrest Goodluck, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Natalie Alyn Lind, Jack Mulhern, David Duchovny, Pam Grier, Christian Jadah, Samantha Mathis. [R]

Dreadfully tiresome prequel to the recent “reboot adaptation” of the Stephen King horror novel set in the same small Maine town all the way back in the late-60s. A young soldier returns home from ‘Nam (alive or dead, does it matter?), and something is definitely disturbed about him, as first noticed by a twenty-something Jud Crandall (White), and wouldn’t you know it, people start to get badly hurt and killed, some of whom then turn into cursed, demonic killers. The flat photography provides zero on the spooky atmosphere front, and the added backstory details offer nothing new or informative to the unsettling folklore behind the town and the Mi’kmaq tribe. The filmmakers, starting with debuting director and co-writer Lindsey Anderson Beer, presumably have contempt either for the source novel/earlier movies, for the audience, or both; one could argue having contempt for three prior Pet Sematary movies that weren’t any good to begin with isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but then why make this at all? (“This” being a movie even worse than any of the ones to come before.) Samantha Mathis plays the Crandall matriarch, but did everyone simply forget she existed or did a bunch of her scenes end up on the cutting room floor? Either way, she doesn’t do much besides appear at the beginning and end, possibly oblivious to everything going on in between.

21/100