Pet Sematary: Bloodlines fixes Stephen King’s biggest plot hole

This preview Pet Sematary: Bloodlines From the Q&A following the film’s world premiere at Fantastic Film Festival 2023.

fans pet cemeteryOne of Stephen King’s most horrifying novels ever written has had a bad case of the flu since it was first published in 1983. The story takes place in a secret cemetery in the woods near a small town in Maine, where anything buried underground returns. Life. It’s a horror story, and naturally there are consequences.

But new protagonist Louis Creed is willing to risk the consequences after learning about the place from local elder Jud Crandall. Why would Judd invite Louis to use the power of Pet Sematary when Judd knows from experience what to expect? Readers have been asking this question for 40 years.

Lindsay Anderson Beale’s new prequel movie, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, making Judd’s actions seem more irresponsible and impossible than ever. But as Biel and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura explained in a Q&A after the festival’s world premiere in September, they did set out to address Judd’s behavior, and ultimately Filling in what King fans consider to be the book’s biggest plot hole.

(Editor’s note: Very minor spoilers ahead Pet Sematary: Bloodlines‘A wide range of settings and inspirations. This preview avoids any specific plot spoilers for the new movie. )

bloodline is a solid enough addition pet cemetery Film library. It’s not nearly as scary as Mary Lambert’s 1989 film adaptation, starring Dale Midkiff as Lois and Fred Gwen as Judd (more memorable). But it’s better paced and acted, and more thought seems to have been put into making it a human story as well as a creature feature. It’s also better in every way than the dismal 2019 remake starring Jason Clarke as Lois and John Lithgow as Jud.It also adds some substantial new lore to the game pet cemetery The world answers some of the lingering questions in enough detail to keep people interested without killing the tension like so many horror spin-offs do. Most importantly, it clarifies the relationship between the town’s native Mi’kmaq people and the cursed cemetery.

At the same time, the film lays out Judd’s backstory, making his later relationship with Louis feel stranger than ever.At the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere, Beale described his script as a substantial rewrite of the first draft by 2019 pet cemetery Co-writer Jeff Buhler has a co-writing credit. The film was mainly inspired by Game of Thrones Chapter 39. pet cemeteryIn the film, Judd tells Louis the story of Timmy Bartman, a Vietnam War veteran who was killed in action, then buried in a cemetery and revived by his grieving father, Bill. (David Duchovny plays Bill in the film) bloodline, a surprisingly understated and effective performance. )

These events in Judd’s youth clearly had a profound impact on him – a chilling chapter in the book and a rich source of content in the new film.But after reading bloodlineit was harder than ever to believe that Judd would take anyone to a cemetery again.

Photo: Philippe Bosse/Paramount Plus

In King’s novel, Judd does provide an unsatisfactory initial explanation for his actions. He suggested that he wanted to teach Louis’ young daughter a lesson about mourning her pet cat, which Louis resurrected. “Maybe I do it because kids need to know that sometimes it’s better to be dead,” Judd said. (“Sometimes it’s better to be dead” became a classic slogan for these films and was bloodline” trailer.) Setting aside the grotesque crassness of violating the natural order of the world in order to teach someone else’s child an unasked-for moral lesson, the lesson itself doesn’t seem worth the cost.

Later in the novel, however, Judd provides another reason entirely, stemming from an incident in which Dr. Louis helped Judd’s wife Norma survive a heart attack. The reason was even more compelling: “This is an evil, frozen place, and I had no right to take you there to bury that cat. I know that now,” he told Louis. “If you knew what was good for your family and what was good for you, you would be wary of its power. I am not strong enough to fight it. You saved Norma’s life and I wanted to do something for you , but that place turned my good intentions into evil purposes.”

During the Fantasy Feast Q&A, an audience member once again posed the question: After everything Judd goes through in this movie, why would anyone be invited to the cemetery? Bill explains: “When you watch any other movie or read this book, you will, Why, why, why did Judd tell Louis about the land when he knew about its evil properties and that he and Louis were friends? We actually wanted to answer that question more in this movie and give a sense of evil whispering to you and tempting you. “This is talked about a lot in the book.”

bloodline Clarified that the cemetery itself does not contain any innate magic. There is a mysterious dark force in the woods that speaks to people’s minds and manipulates them, though it prefers to resurrect corpses because they won’t argue back like a living person like Judd. Still, Bill said, it ended up getting Judd. “The book implies that Timmy Bartman is the reason why evil is targeting Judd,” she said. “It almost suggests that evil is waiting for Judd to become more retarded and older and then catch him. Obviously, we know that’s the case.”

Photo: Philippe Bosse/Paramount Plus

“We were trying to figure this out when we were making the last movie, like, Why did you ask (Louis) to take the cat out?Di Bonaventura said in the Q&A. “In trying to answer this question, we found that there is no answer. Trying to rationalize evil, evil forces, it’s impossible. “I think that runs through King’s work, which is that it’s not really trying to explain the evil of different things — they just are.”

Di Bonaventura added that he found the discovery interesting because it goes against studio logic, which is that audiences expect all their questions to be clearly answered in a movie. “The development process in Hollywood is always trying to answer that question,” he said. “The audience is going to want the answer to that question. In this case, we found that every time we came up with our own answer, it didn’t make (the movie) stronger, it made it weaker.”

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Premieres exclusively on Paramount Plus on October 6.