When I began watching Pet Sematary: Bloodlines I had no expectations whatsoever. The remake of Pet Sematary from 2019 took all my hopes away for this one. That movie was so bad I even entertained, for a short time, the thought of passing up on this prequel. But, as with every King movie, I did watch it and I did that with this one as well and when the end credits rolled I said to myself, “this wasn’t as bad as I had feared”.

It's not the best adaptation from a King story. Actually, it’s very, very loosely based on stuff that happens in the book and that stuff they have changed around and added to quite a lot but what they try to do is tell the origin of the pet cemetery that is the root of all the evil in King’s story. That and the backstory of Jud Crandall.

So, it’s a prequel but I choose to see it as a prequel to the 1989 version of Pet Sematary and not the 2019 version. That one I’m still trying to make my brain unsee so… It works in parts. Jackson White plays the young Jud, and he actually looks a bit like Fred Gwynne who plays the old Jud in the movie from 1989 and that is good. We also get Henry Thomas as Dan Crandall (Jud’s dad) and David Duchovny as Bill Baterman (Timmy Baterman’s dad) and those three are the ones that makes this movie watchable.

Also, the backstory of Jud is what makes this movie watchable. The rest is just like any old horror movie out there. Some jump scares, the dead coming back to life and so on. I would personally have appreciated it more if it would have focused even more on Jud and less on the dead coming back. And actually, coming back from the dead isn’t that bad in this movie. They are pretty smart and capable and maybe they aren’t looking like they’ve just been to a spa but they sure as hell don’t look like they have been buried six feet down.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines 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. Draw your own conclusions from that…