They are making a new Pet Sematary movie, even though they just remade the first Pet Sematary movie in 2019. This one's not a remake, I guess. It's a prequel called Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. Someday soon every scary story that has ever been told will be adapted into a prequel on Paramount Plus with ": Bloodlines" attached to the end of its title. Anyway, we're not really here to talk about that. We're here to talk about the dog that makes an appearance in the trailer for Pet Sematary: Bloodlines.
I know that Pet Sematary, the novel, is not actually about scary animals coming back from the dead, but rather a crushingly bleak meditation on grief and loss. But from the moment it was first adapted for the screen, it became at least in part about scary animals coming back from the dead. That's because scary undead animals are freaky to look at, and any horror franchise can get a lot of mileage out of continually spooking people with scenes featuring hell-spawned beasts with only murder on their minds.
And so I am forced to ask the creators of this latest Pet Sematary movie: What's going on with the dog in your trailer? Is that scruffy little buddy meant to frighten me? There's not even any blood on it. Its jaw remains attached to its body. Its coat, frankly, looks healthy and lush. Is the way it's sitting meant to unsettle me? My dog sits like that all the time. Do you know what I do when I walk into a room and find my dog sitting in what I like to call the "goblin position"? I march right over to her and say, "Oooohhh are we a little gremlin today? Is my little sweetie doing gremlin stuff?" and then I rub my face against hers.
Perhaps you think I am mistaking the purpose of this dog's inclusion in the Pet Sematary: Bloodlines trailer. Maybe it's not meant to be a scary dog. I suppose that's possible, but that doesn't explain why its appearance is played like a jump scare. I mean look at this:
I will spend the rest of the day laughing about how the people who made this trailer did a smash cut, complete with a scary-movie beat drop, to a dog that I want to hug and kiss.
