The stratification of streaming content, divided up by individual studio, forced the manic plundering of back catalogues, turning any old property into a new way to lure in subscribers. It was a mostly cursed tactic, leaving us with unwanted answers to questions no one was bothering to ask: what if Gremlins but animated, what if Grease’s pink ladies but prequel, what if Fatal Attraction but Joshua Jackson and what if Sex and the City but terrible?
Unsurprisingly, most of these have failed (And Just Like That boldly continues, redefined as a wine-soaked hate-watch) and as we head toward a contraction of the industry after a record bloat, it seems unlikely that quite as many similar experiments will take place. It leaves a film such as Pet Sematary: Bloodlines feeling even more like a dusty old thing of the past, not just because of its period setting but because of its sheer redundancy, existing just because rather than because of any real reason. Even the film it’s technically linked to, 2019’s barely buffed remake of Pet Sematary, about a devilish cemetery that brings the dead back to life, felt like a step in a pointless direction, only resurrecting the 1989 horror film as a result of author Stephen King’s renewed popularity, 2017’s It: Chapter One making a monstrous $700m worldwide (the highest-grossing horror film of all time).
