Pet Sematary: Blood Ties is an unnecessary prequel that loses all the charm of the original

On October 6, the Paramount+ streaming service premiered the film “Pet Sematary: Blood Ties.”

In 2019, Paramount released the film Pet Sematary. The next film adaptation of Stephen King's cult book turned out to be commercially successful: box office receipts exceeded $113 million against a budget of $21 million. It's no surprise that the studio has begun work on a prequel.

At the same time, the team of authors has almost completely changed. Only producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (“Transformers,” “1408”) and screenwriter Jeffrey Buechler (“Transformers,” “1408”) remained.Omen: Rebirth"). The prequel was directed by screenwriter Lindsey Beer - this is her debut in this field.

Starring Jackson White (Lie to Me), Henry Thomas (E.T., The Haunting of Hill House) and David Duchovny (The X-Files).

The events of the film take place in 1969. Jude and his girlfriend Norma are about to leave Ludlow. On their way out of town, they hit a dog, who survives the accident. They take her to her owners - single father Bill, whose son Timmy recently returned from the war in

Vietnam. Suddenly, the dog attacks Norma, forcing the heroes to stay in Ludlow for several days. Gradually, Jude and other residents notice that Timmy is acting too strangely, and Bill refuses to explain what is happening to his son and dog.

Unnecessary prequel

Obviously, the film was made because of the excellent box office of the first part. However, the authors (who changed) were never able to justify the value of the remake. Quite the contrary: it spoils both the idea of ​​the book and the previous picture.

The beauty of Pet Sematary as a story is its simplicity. Everything is clear to the reader (or viewer, if we are talking about a literal film adaptation), and the dramatic component (loss of a child and the desire to return him) is too strong. It turns out not so much horror as a creepy and sad story. And she doesn’t need any additional details at all - there is an Indian cemetery where the buried are resurrected, everything else doesn’t matter. However, the entire prequel consists of attempts to add details to this simple but perfectly working mechanism.

For example, screenwriters “extend” the plot. The action takes place in 1969, but it also has roots in the past - the film even has a scene about the pioneers of Ludlow. And the more we learn about the cemetery and the city, the more crazy the idea seems. This is the case when the details spoil everything.

The attitude of local residents towards the cemetery is also changing. You can hate the film only for the phrase “we are gathering advice.” The advice, if anything, has been around for generations and protects people from pet cemeteries. Almost "Team A" or hunters for haunted, not otherwise.

Inconsistencies with the previous film

The council and other layers destroy the connection between “Blood Ties” and the previous picture. The hero did not understand anything about it, and therefore buried the cat (and then the child) on this damned cemetery and seemed to awaken an evil that had been sleeping for many years. The prequel says that evil was just dormant, so nothing special happened.

But what is more striking is another detail that defies explanation. Let me remind you: in the 2019 film, Louis Creed goes to bury a cat in a cemetery because of the advice of Jude, a local old man. In the prequel, young Jude faces the consequences of being buried in this cemetery, which causes him to lose loved ones. That is, it would seem that he should have learned a lesson. But no: 50 years later he is dispensing advice that leads to horror. Either he is a fool and has forgotten the past, or the writers have forgotten the plot of the last film.

Internal contradictions

The prequel not only contradicts the previous film; there are also important inconsistencies in the new script. So, it is very strange that in a small town, where all news travels quickly, they never found out that Timmy returned from the war in a coffin.

However, the screenwriters abandon logic not only to set up the plot. For the sake of the romantic line, those risen from the dead show selectivity - they kill everyone they come across, except for one girl. There is no explanation for this. But she needs to be saved.

The film script looks like someone buried the novel Stephen King at the Indian cemetery of books, after which the novel was resurrected, but changed: it became clumsy and absurd.

Lack of emotions

The original story is about loss. Screen adaptation 2019 did not invent anything and relied on the same fear of the death of a loved one. In the prequel, the writers do everything to move away from this idea - apparently, they considered it not original enough for the next film. However, they either couldn’t come up with another one or forgot. At first it seems that the drama will be built on the loss of his son returning from Vietnam. However, this event has an impact on the plot, but does not carry any drama. Like, he buried and buried, then what?

But other heroes support this attitude towards death and do not worry at all about the death of loved ones. Has someone died? It’s okay, let’s move on with our lives. The ending of the film generally looks like everyone has forgotten about the losses. The lack of emotion turns the film into an everyday horror with characters who are impossible to empathize with.

Weak horror

In the first 15-20 minutes the film seems like a drama that will develop into horror, - like the first part. But hopes are not justified, so the film slowly slides into a passable horror film. There are simply no scary moments in it. There are screams, murders, blood, but not scary at all.

To mask this problem, a kind of editing is used. Some scenes are edited so quickly that you can't even understand what's happening. Obviously, this is an attempt to hide the poor quality of the production: fake blood will not impress, so it is shown furtively.

And some terrible (in theory) events simply remain behind the scenes. It's reminiscent of the first seasons."Supernatural": the budget is too small to show the terrible creature, so the director films in such a way that the viewer himself can figure out what is happening. This technique can only work if the atmosphere itself instills fear and the characters evoke emotions, but this has nothing to do with “Blood Ties.”

Pet Sematary: Blood Ties is an example of an unnecessary prequel. It's so casual about the previous film that it contradicts it. At the same time, he himself is not able to evoke any emotions - neither sympathy nor fear.