This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Based on the never-before-told chapter from Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary,” PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES takes place in 1969, where a young Jud Crandall (Jackson White) has dreams of leaving his hometown of Ludlow, Maine behind. However, he 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.

For the world premiere of PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES at the 2023 Fantastic Fest, Nightmarish Conjurings’ Shannon McGrew spoke with director Lindsey Anderson Beer. During their chat, they discussed everything from how the origin story came to be, capturing the sound of death, and Stephen King’s involvement in the project.

Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Lindsey! To kick things off, how did the origin story for this prequel to Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” come about?

Lindsey Anderson Beer: The original idea to tell an origin story came from the producers Mark Vahradian and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and from the previous writer, Jeff Buhler. They had this really great idea to revisit the Timmy Baderman text in “Pet Sematary.” It’s only a few pages in the book but they are some of my favorite pages when I was a kid reading it. So I thought that was an absolutely brilliant idea and I loved the bones of it.

When I came on to direct and then I became the writer of the movie, my approach was to re-read and re-read the novel to think about what were the questions that I wanted answered from this text. What do I want to know? What do I want to see? That was really my guiding principle for any time I could bring in something real from the book and pull on a thread. The end of the book, for instance, says that Jud is the guardian of the woods and so answering that mystery, like, what does that mean?

The book, for instance, intimates that Timmy Baterman is the reason that the evil is even targeting Jud as an older person, which I think a lot of people don’t know. There are elements in the book like cannibalism being a main symptom, which is obviously not in the other movies and it’s a big thing. There’s just so much from the book that I thought was ripe for putting on the screen that I wanted to see when I was a kid reading the book. So that’s how I approached it.

Lindsey Anderson Beer: Casting those younger roles was a real process. I watched so many tapes and the people that I ultimately chose were people that singularly stood out to me. It wasn’t like I was hardcore debating between other people. The final test for me to make sure that they were the right people was chemistry reads because it was so crucial that, in particular, Donna (Isabella LaBlanc) and Manny (Forrest Goodluck) had a really touching sibling relationship. It was so important that Jud and Manny have a friendship that you believe [in] and that they could bounce off of each other. Getting those central relationships right was really important for me. It was a very rigorous casting process but one that I’m delighted with. I think they all knocked it out of the park.

One of my favorite aspects of PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES is the sound design and the way you used it to amplify the tension. What was the decision behind focusing on that?

Lindsey Anderson Beer: It was something that I knew I wanted to do from the beginning. I called my composer and my sound designer into a meeting and I was like, we’re gonna have to all work together in a way that maybe you’re not quite used to because I don’t really want a traditional score in this movie wherever I can avoid it. I want the silence of death and I want sounds that are just natural sounds elevated to sound gross or violent or off-putting.

It was a challenge but one they were really excited by, and we had so much fun designing sounds. There are some [sounds] that are easy to pick out and then there are sounds that you wouldn’t know. For instance, I asked the composer to bring in the sound… so scientists recorded the sound of a black hole and I thought that it sounded so eerie. I really wanted the sense of this evil being from beyond time and being something almost inherent in the universe. I asked if they could incorporate the sound into the score, which he did, and no matter how ridiculous the ask, I feel like they always rose to the challenge.

The gore was superb in PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES, most notably in a certain scene featuring someone’s foot. Did you try to lean more into practical versus CGI?

Lindsey Anderson Beer: I did. I tried to lean practical whenever we could. That particular scene with the foot was a combination of both – it’s a prosthetic that’s enhanced by some visual effects work. I love that scene and it was a blast to shoot. That’s one of my favorite scenes to watch with other people cause I just love watching the reactions.

Stephen King is so generous when it comes to people adapting his work for the screen. How involved was he in the process of bringing this film to life?

Lindsey Anderson Beer: He was not overly involved. He does have sign-offs so once we felt like the script was in a really good place, we sent it to him to see what he thought. He gave us the thumbs up and that felt amazing.

Lastly, what would you like to say to all the writers and actors who are currently on strike due to improper compensation from the studios as well as how their jobs will be impacted due to the rise of AI?

Lindsey Anderson Beer: Artists are everything and we can see that in how many Stephen King adaptations there have been. The brilliance of a creator cannot be replaced and cannot be undervalued. I hope we have a deal really soon. This is an important moment, not just for our industry but for workers and creatives everywhere. I’m glad that we’re having this moment.

PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES had its world premiere at the 2023 Fantastic Fest. PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES premieres October 6, 2023, exclusively on Paramount+

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Shannon McGrew

Founder/Co-Owner at Nightmarish Conjurings

Shannon is the Founder of Nightmarish Conjurings and a lover of all things horror and haunt related. When she's not obsessively collecting all things "Trick 'R Treat" related, or trying to convince everyone that "Hereditary" is one of the greatest horror films ever made, you can find her designing interiors for commercial restaurants. An avid haunt fan, Shannon spends the entire year visiting haunts and immersive experiences throughout the Southern California area and hopes to one day design her own haunted attraction.

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