“Pet Sematary: Bloodlines”: The prequel of the famous Stephen King saga is out next month

A couple of years ago, as we are in this stampede of 1980s and 1990s horror movie remakes, we saw the release of a new adaptation of the popular Stephen King novel, Pet Sematary (2019). The filmmakers tried to add a new twist to it, but it pretty much was all the same, bringing nothing new to the original film adaptation by Mary Lambert, Pet Sematary (1989). Now, a new entry in the saga is coming out, this time in the form of a prequel, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023).

The original novel and adapted movies centered on a couple and their two kids moving to their new home in the small rural town of Ludlow, Maine, alarmingly close to a busy highway. After the death of the family cat in an awful accident, reluctantly, the desperate father takes his friendly neighbor Jud Crandall’s advice to bury it in an ancient Micmac graveyard: a mystical burial ground imbued with alleged reanimating powers. But sometimes death is better because when the cat returns from the grave something evil is inside.

The prequel Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) is set in 1969, where a young Jud Crandall dreams of escaping his hometown until he discovers the malevolent secrets of what is buried in a cemetery. He confronts a haunting family legacy that forever connects him to the place and unites with his childhood friends as they face an ancient evil that has plagued Ludlow from its inception.

The movie is directed by the debutant Lindsey Anderson Beer, a screenwriter known for being the writer and executive producer of Netflix’s Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018) and who is in charge of penning a series of upcoming adaptation films like Bambi, Short Circuit, Silver Sable, and M.A.S.K.: Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. She is also the co-writer of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) together with Jeff Buhler, who also wrote Pet Sematary (2019) as well as The Midnight Meat Train (2008), Insanitarium (2008), The Prodigy (2019), Jacob’s Ladder (2019), The Grudge (2020), and Studio 666 (2022).

The main cast in Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) is led by David Duchovny, known for being Fox Mulder in the popular series The X-Files (1993–2018) and movies, as well as Californication (2007–2014), Kalifornia (1993), and Evolution (2001), Samantha Mathis who starred in Pump Up the Volume (1990), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), and The Punisher (2004), and Pam Grier, the icon of the blacksploitation films in the 1970s and 1980s like Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), and also present in Mars Attacks! (1996), Jackie Brown (1997), and Ghosts of Mars (2001). Jackson White playing the role of Jud Crandall, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn Lind, Jack Mulhern, Forrest Goodluck, and Glen Gould complete the main cast.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023) is Rated R for horror violence, gore, and language. Produced by Paramount Pictures with Di Bonaventura Pictures, the fill will open on Paramount+ on October 6, 2023, after its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 23, 2023.

Watch the official trailer for Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023).