If your best friend’s father resurrected
the vengeful, vicious version of his son and he began attacking everyone you love, what
would you do? Ludlow, Maine has been a ticking timebomb
for the last three hundred years. Ever since the MicMaq tribe built a burial
area for animals in the woods hoping it would protect them from the savagery of Stephen
King’s imagination. Little did they know, there IS no escaping
that. The town still exists right on the edge of
evil, ignoring the thing in the woods like it’ll just go away on its own instead of
spawning thinking, scheming zombie-versions of anyone who is buried there. If we’re going to survive, we’ll need
to stay away from people we know, aim for the eyes, and leave town entirely. I’m going to break down the mistakes made,
what you should do, and how to beat the ANCIENT EVIL in PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES. The year is 1969. At the height of the Vietnam War, a grieving
father named BILL drags his son’s body into the cursed pet sematary and buries him with
his dog tags. Apparently, little TIMMY died with a noose
around his neck, whether self inflicted or not is anybody’s guess. It means the same to Bill, who’s barely
got him in the ground before Timmy springs back to life, dragging his beloved dog into
the ground beside him. Looks like the sematary is feeling generous
today – a two for one special. Across town JUD and his girlfriend NORMA are
packing away their lives to leave Ludlow for good and join the Peace Corp. Jud’s dad DAN seems relieved it’s finally
happening. Jud isn’t thrilled about the move himself
– he just wants to be of service, he’s a hero without a cause, a dangerous thing
in a town adjacent to the mouth of heck. We learn that he had two good friends growing
up – MANNY, a local kid of native descent, and Timmy. In town, Jud runs into Bill who bitterly gloats
that Timmy is home with an honorable discharge and a silver star and implies that Jud is
a draft dodger…which he is, unintentionally. We’ll learn later that Dan, postal worker
MARJORIE, MAYOR BENSON, SHERIFF ANDERSON and a couple of others are all part of a secret
society in Ludlow that guards the pet sematary. Not very well, obviously. Bill breezed right on in. But it came with the perk of falsifying Jud’s
medical record so that he would be ineligible to serve, and it’s an open secret among
Ludlow’s adults. The day after Bill uses the sematary, Benson
warns Marjorie that they’ll have to start a city watch because the sheriff found a fresh
grave there this morning. This right here…is more than a little concerning
for a number of reasons that we’ll get into later. Suffice to say, this is bad news for Jud and
Norma’s great escape. At the Ludlow town border, a raven destroys
their windshield and they get out of the car to find Timmy’s dog HENDRIX looking ruff,
I mean barking mad. Jud and Norma decide to escort it back to
Bill’s farm. Yeah, nah. I’ve read Cujo. This dog ain’t right, and it’s time to
drive around and shoot the sheriff a friendly message about the dog possibly having rabies. Jud and Norma reach Bill’s farm where bones and
meat hang everywhere. Timmy taunts Jud, saying he would’ve died
the first day of the war and he’s lucky his father paid to keep him out. But it sounds like he’s either responding
to or parroting something talking in his head. Jud tries to make excuses to leave but Hendrix
suddenly attacks. Dog bites aren’t just deadly in the bloodletting
sense, or because they might cause rabies, which has been 100 percent fatal in all but
29 cases worldwide. Dog mouths are filthy with dangerous bacteria
that can cause sepsis and transfer tetanus, noroviruses, and salmonella. If a bite breaks the skin, wrap a clean cloth
around their wound and apply consistent pressure to stop the bleeding, while either calling
911 for help or driving them to a hospital. Nearly a third of dog bite victims who are
hospitalized require some form of surgery and nearly ten percent sustain long-term nerve
or tendon damage. And obviously, once your best childhood friend
just stands there and watches his dog attack your girlfriend, you stay as far away as possible. That’s a man who’s dealing with some crap. Today, we’d be staging an intervention. Back in 1969, we’re leaving the guy with
the PTSD demon alone. Instead, Jud returns to confront Timmy, and
finds him elbow-deep in a carcass, whispering that he needs to “kill them all.” Timmy disappears as Bill approaches and puts
the fear of God into Jud. Jud returns home and tells his parents about
Norma’s attack. He says they’ll have to stay a few days
for her to recover before leaving. His parents exchange a secretive glance before
Jud probes his dad for answers. But, Dan won’t tell him anything, only saying
that he’s protecting him and wants him to leave ASAP. OR, how about you call the doctor you paid
to keep your son out of the war and tell him to transfer Norma to a hospital in another
town. Jud would definitely follow. Meanwhile, Timm makes a kill list of every
important character in this story, which I’d make fun of if I hadn’t read most of Stephen
King’s novels. This list is what the evil in the sematary
does to people. It corrupts your memories, preys on your closest
relationships, and turns your vengeance against those you know. Timmy pulls off his deteriorating flesh and
uses his blood to mark the page. Then, he heads over to Marjorie’s house
with Hendrix to freak her out by quoting her father’s unalive note at her before disappearing. As a general life rule, if you come home to
an erratic, unexpected visitor who makes you uncomfortable…leave immediately. Break your routine so you’re harder to track
down, especially if you have a secret society of Ludlow knights to turn to. She calls Mayor Benson, at least, but the
dialog is all over the place here in terms of clarity. He says Timmy couldn’t know what the unalive
note says but also admits that people who come back from the sematary like to use dark
secret details to get into people’s heads. Meanwhile, Marjorie’s over here with a crime
web on her wall, which suggests that even if they have personally never dealt with a
sematary problem before, their parents probably did. So, get everyone together. Go over to Bill’s. Double check. Even if you only think Timmy’s dog has been
resurrected, that’s more than enough reason to stop the threat as soon as possible. The glacial pace at which these so-called
town guardians are moving is sinful A-F. It’s like spending your whole life working
in a lighthouse, only to see a ship careening toward the rocks and letting it crash because
you don’t want to climb a flight of stairs. Just as Marjorie ends the call, Hendrix attacks
out of nowhere, which shouldn’t have been possible if you’d left when you should or
taken precautions like someone just showed up with their dog to threaten you. The Ludlow Knights convene in a local diner. Marjorie arrives sporting a gnarly bite on
her face. She tells the others she killed Hendrix and
now they need to kill Timmy… …but…
…then they just sit there like refugees in a Waffle House during a hurricane. This story never goes into detail about the
training these townies received to take over this pet sematary vigil from their parents,
but you’d think they’d know the legends of the sematary at least. We’ll learn later that the earliest colonial
accounts of this place mention an insatiable hunger for flesh, which means you could easily
lay a trap for these things with a pile of meat and a sniper rifle. Right now. Go… …Are you ordering waffles first, or…? Seriously, this is the ONLY reason your group
exists. Meanwhile, Manny comes home to his hippie
sister DONNA’s party, where Timmy appears and cryptically warns Donna that she and Manny
won’t escape Ludlow alive. Spoiler alert, bro – you think I don’t
already know that? This town is ten people away from collapsing
completely. Donna tells Manny their grandmother said their
people built the Pet Sematary long ago to protect them from the forest’s ancient evil. She says something is talking THROUGH Timmy
and it’s a warning that Timmy is dangerous. Okay, so did Gram pass down any other tips? The novel mentions that the Native burial
ground beyond the pet sematary attracted a wendigo, which soured the ground and anything
buried in it. It is a naturally occurring dark place with
no cut and dried answer about how to cleanse or destroy it. But since there aren’t a bunch of creatures
roving around munching on the living, it’s safe to say the things that emerge from it
have been destroyed before. And you know better than to mess with monsters
you don’t know how to defeat. Which means you leave Ludlow right now. Pack a bug-out bag and prove Timmy’s premonition
wrong IMMEDIATELY. Drive to the next town and call the Ludlow
sheriff about what Timmy said. You can bet your arse if I didn’t have a
gun or the skills to lay a trap and someone threatened my family, it’d be time to bounce. We’ll deal with it once we’ve put some
space between us and the danger. Will Donna heed her own warning? Give it your best guess. Jud wakes up to something creeping outside
his window. He goes out with his gun into the street,
nearly gets pancaked by a car, and finds a picture of him, Timmy and Manny as kids with
their faces burned out. Then he turns and finds his dad just sitting
on the porch. Dan watched the car almost hit his son and
said nothing. But that’s not the worst part…he’s just
sitting there, after we’ve already seen his group convene about the Timmy problem. You do not have time to lounge, my guy. Jud and Manny head to the church where the
town’s oldest records are kept. But Manny never mentions Timmy’s odd party
behavior, and he never thinks to bring Donna along despite the present danger, which leaves
her completely exposed when Timmy attacks. Timmy enters Donna’s house without her noticing
and jump-scares her. She crawls away, trying to reason with him,
trying to humanize herself, but he appears out of nowhere and stabs her. She pulls out the knife and cuts his arm,
then bolts. But without car keys she can only run blindly
into the fields. He captures her and drags her away. We don’t want to believe the worst of people
we’ve known our entire lives, so we ignore our instincts screaming out for us to listen
to them. When he stabs her, he tells her “Timmy isn’t
here anymore,” which is our cue to slam that knife into his eye or neck or ear. At best, he’s rationalizing brutal violence. At worst, he’s deranged and incoherent. If we can’t land a killing blow and we’re
injured like this, it’s time for a barricaded room with a phone. Don’t seek out locations with limited vision
ranges where attackers can remain hidden until they’re literally on top of you. You want to control your environment before
it ends up controlling you. At the church, Jud and Manny read old journals
about the original settlers who were brutally slaughtered. All save one – Ludlow, the namesake of the
town – who tore through his own group and the rescue group and chased the MicMaq tribe
from the region. Curiously, we learn a single MicMaq Indian
stayed behind, wearing an animal mask, beating a drum, and going unnoticed or ignored by
Ludlow. His only warning to the rescue party was “Aim
for the eyes.” Jud finds an entry in the journal that identifies
the Ludlow founding families, which includes all the secret society members. We suddenly cut to Dan sitting on his porch,
reading from his DAD’s journal about incidents in which dead cannibalistic people terrorized
the town. He also says aiming for the eyes is the only
way to kill them. Again I ask…why are you just sitting here?! Timmy’s over here gorging on raw flesh…
…and dragging Donna’s body into a grave in the pet sematary. Jud confronts his dad and Dan just walks him
right into the pet sematary and tells them about his secret society of guardians while
Jud’s ears ring with evil whispers. Dan says the group of families have been protecting
the town for generations from the sickness in the woods and now it must be stopped from
spreading again. Look, I don’t want to sound like a broken
record here but why aren’t you already over at Bill’s house as a group handling this? This is a frustrating part of the movie, honestly. An entire subset of the town population has
intimate details of previous generational successes, but days pass before they do anything
about it. And when Dan DOES decide to confront Bill,
he does it alone and unarmed like a moron made of dreamlight and rainbows. It’s too late for Donna, who arrives at
the hospital, bones crunching, mind hazy, voices whispering in her rattled dead mind,
searching for Norma. Norma tries to help her, but only makes a
gruesome discovery instead. Donna’s skin sloughs right off her foot. If Ludlow’s slowest don’t stop the menace
in time, decay will. Norma attempts to run, encountering a doctor
with his neck broken and getting sprayed with blood as Donna kills the nurse. She runs upstairs, then around to another
staircase without closing a single door behind her or trying to lock herself in anywhere. The only door that IS locked is the exit. Donna corners her. Norma finally tries locking herself in a room
but can’t close the door in time. Donna quickly overpowers her. I’m not going to crap all over this girl’s
half-arsed attempt to escape. This isn’t a building she knows, and it
seems to be employed by two people, both of whom were just murdered in front of her. Plus, “Evacuate” IS the first recommendation
of the Department of Homeland Security’s active shooter response plan. However, if YOU are ever in an active assailant
situation in an expansive space you’re unfamiliar with, hide first and fast. Barricade the door. Straight up stack stuff between the closed
door and the far wall so it’s physically impossible for the attacker to get in even
if they open the door. Then, call 911. Only attack as a last resort. And if you do, take out their most important
sense at your first opportunity. Blind them with paint, aerosol spray, hand
soap – whatever’s in range. Toss a blanket over their face. Especially if they’re not armed with a gun. Despite no one calling anybody, Jud, Manny,
Sheriff Anderson, Benson, Marjorie, Bill and Dan assemble at Bill’s farm to confront
Timmy like the worst prepared avengers. Their plan is – I kid you not – for everyone
to go in, grab Norma and Donna since they don’t know she’s been wendigoed yet, before
Bill just straight up manhandles his son and they set the house on fire with them both
inside. You do know your son has eyes and ears, don’t
ya Bill? This hunting party has been standing on the
lawn for the last hour. Not only does he know you’re here, he’s
had all that time to plan each of your gruesome deaths. How about we try a carnivore’s buffet on
the lawn, draw them out and end them from afar? I’d settle for a goddanged buddy system,
guys. Your ancestors are weeping in their graves. Seriously, not only is a buddy system safest
here, but you also need it in case one of the first-timers can’t kill when the situation
calls for it. Timmy sets the house on fire as Jud and Manny
find Donna’s masks in the kitchen. She reveals herself and begins slashing at
Manny while he yells at Jud not to shoot her. Manny’s saved by a double tap from Dan – OH
WAIT, no he’s not. Because Dan – the ONE GUY who’s actually
read the literature – DIDN’T shoot her in the eyes. REAL dumb reason to die, Dan. Manny remembered, at least, and finishes her
a second later. Bill arrives to tell them the house is on
fire and drag them down into the basement, which is just SO dumb. The door outside is RIGHT THERE, guys. Friendly word of advice, if a building is
on fire, don’t go deeper into said building. But of course, they have to go down there,
because in the four days since Timmy’s come back from the dead, he’s been digging extensive
tunnels…in between murdering people. Busy guy. We cut to some random space where Norma is
still alive, restrained and laying on her back in a weird mud hollow. The guys crawl into the tunnels and…sigh…split
up, as Timmy follows them in. In the hollow, water begins to seep in and
within a few seconds, Norma’s drowning in mud. Try sitting up, Norma. Seriously, you’re tied at the hands and
feet, not to the earth itself. Exercise that core strength BEFORE the mud
makes it impossible. Timmy digs into a ration of dad… …before luring Jud and Manny to the exit
and dragging Manny away into the forest. Manny sits up, trapped by a landmine trip
wire as Jud wastes the last bullets in his revolver chasing Timmy away. Timmy’s only lying in wait. Not the greatest idea to fight a man with
actual military training if you don’t have any, but what do I know. Of course, Jud loses the magical gun with
infinite bullets immediately, and Timmy drags him underwater. With only a flare gun remaining, Manny lands
the killing blow from afar… …and Norma finally sits up, escaping from
the mud pit with an extra four percent of effort. In the end Norma and Jud take up the mantel
of being this town’s worst protectors and Manny leaves Ludlow behind. This whole keeping secrets thing is the true
villain in a story like this. Timmy is just a puppet of evil, which means
the second a group like the secret society thinks the dead have risen, it’s time to
hunt and kill it before it can kill others. Seriously, Marjorie, Benson, Sheriff Anderson,
Dan and Bill might still have died fighting Timmy, but Donna would still be alive, and
their chances of survival would have been much higher. By the way, anyone in this podunk town think
of paving this whole place over? Maybe turn it into a stinking rotting dump
where no one is going to accidentally wander into it. Heck, just tell everyone the freaking sematary
kills your s*x drive and they’ll avoid it forever. For those reasons, I think PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES
was Beaten. And remember, unless they can rise as a controllable
army to kill your enemies, let the dead stay dead.
