This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
There’s a prequel series that chronicles events before the story told in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary coming to Paramount+. And that series, appropriately called Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, just got a trailer that confirms that dead things buried in a parcel of ground may come back, but come back… wrong.
Buy the Book
Red Rabbit
As the trailer reveals, David Duchovny has buried a young, recently deceased man named Timmy (Jack Mulhern) in the titular Pet Sematary. “Timmy” comes back to life after burial, but has more murderous tendencies than he had when he was living the first time. The plot is unsurprising if you know King’s source material, but the trailer is a chilling one, and suggests this prequel will be suitably horrifying on its own.
Here’s the official synopsis, which is impressively vague:
In 1969, a young Jud Crandall has dreams of leaving his hometown of Ludlow, Maine behind, but soon discovers sinister secrets buried within and is forced to confront a dark family history that will forever keep him connected to Ludlow. Banding together, Jud and his childhood friends must fight an ancient evil that has gripped Ludlow since its founding, and once unearthed has the power to destroy everything in its path. Based on the untold chapter from Pet Sematary, Stephen King’s chilling novel, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is a terrifying prequel and the untold story of why sometimes dead is better…
In addition to Mulhern and Duchovny, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines stars Jackson White (Tell Me Lies), Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant), Henry Thomas (The Fall of the House of Usher, Gangs of New York), Natalie Alyn Lind (The Goldbergs, The Gifted), Isabella Star LaBlanc (True Detective: Night Country), and Pam Grier (Cinnamon, Jackie Brown).
The series premieres on Paramount+ on October 6, 2023. In the meantime, here’s a poster that is in no way disturbing or scary, we swear:
