WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Pet Sematary: Bloodlines.
Summary
- Pet Sematary: Bloodlines failed to answer the biggest mystery of the 2019 remake - how did Norma die before the events of the story?
- The prequel missed a huge opportunity to explore Jud's relationship with Norma and potentially continue the cycle of violence by burying her in the cursed cemetery.
- By changing Norma's story and making her a more tragic character, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines inadvertently made her storyline more compelling than in previous adaptations.
While Pet Sematary: Bloodlines was a prequel to 2019’s Pet Sematary remake, the Stephen King spinoff failed to answer that movie’s biggest mystery. The Pet Sematary franchise has not been author Stephen King’s most successful set of adaptations. Although director Mary Lambert’s original 1989 movie Pet Sematary is now seen as a cult classic, the adaptation received mixed reviews upon release. Its first sequel was a campier, sillier affair that fared even worse with reviewers, and the franchise hit a critical nadir in 2019 with the unnecessary remake Pet Sematary. However, this wasn’t the end of the series yet.
The creators of the prequel Pet Sematary: Bloodlines ignored Jud’s advice that sometimes dead is better when they revived the series once again in 2023. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines earned reviews that were as bad as its predecessor, with most critics complaining that the prequel wasted the interesting elements of its characters on a predictable plot. However, this was not the biggest problem with the prequel. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines' cast of characters was centered on the young Jud Crandall and features his love interest Norma as a major name. However, the movie never clarified the franchise’s biggest lingering plot hole.
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Doesn't Reveal How Norma Died Before The 2019 Remake
When the remake didn’t reveal when or how Jud’s wife Norma died, it seemed like a prequel that focused on a younger version of Jud would inevitably address this. Both the original 1989 movie and King’s 1983 book had Norma die of an illness after the story began, but 2019’s disastrous Pet Sematary remake had her die sometime before this from an unspecified fate. Although Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is more of a prequel to the novel than the 2019 remake, this only makes it more surprising that the movie still leaves a lot of questions to be answered about Norma herself.
Since Jud clearly had a lot of experience with the cursed cemetery before the original novel and its movie adaptation began, viewers could reasonably have surmised that his familiarity with the location was related to his love interest’s untimely death. However, if this is the case, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines didn't mention it. This felt like a huge missed opportunity when the ending of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines could have seen Jud bury Norma there after her death, thus causing the tragic cycle of violence to continue anew. However, the prequel fails to do this even though it was seemingly set up in the 2019 remake.
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Makes Norma A Much More Tragic Character
There is a deleted scene from Pet Seminary’s 2019 remake that reveals Jud did bury Norma in the cemetery after she died, reanimating her before he had to kill her again. Given all she went through in Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, it seems pretty absurd that Jud would have put her through that ordeal after death. Additionally, Norma marrying Jud ultimately made her cursed to stay in Ludlow all her life alongside him, even though she had been planning to leave town and join the Peace Corps. As such, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines inadvertently made Stephen King's supporting Pet Sematary character more tragic than her earlier incarnations by changing her story.