‘Pet Sematary’ Prequel Cast Adds Cinematic Badass Pam Grier

The Pet Sematary prequel just got itself a cool new cast member. Pam Grier, the blaxploitation icon and all-around badass, is now part of the growing cast of the Lindsey Beer-directed film. The film will serve as a prequel to the 2019 film adaptation of Stephen King’s famous tale of a burial ground that raises the dead. Filming is expected to begin in August, with the movie set to premiere exclusively on Paramount+.

Variety has the scoop that Pam Grier is joining the Pet Sematary prequel cast. We have no idea who she’s playing just yet, because a lot of details are being kept secret, much like death itself. The only concrete info we have at the moment is that Jackson White is set to play the younger version of Jud Crandall, the helpful old man who makes the huge mistake of telling people about the cursed Micmac Burial Ground. John Lithgow played Jud in the 2019 film, and Fred Gwynne played him in the 1989 Pet Sematary movie.

In addition to Grier and White, the cast also includes Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant), Jack Mulhern (Mare of Easttown), Natalie Alyn Lind (The Goldbergs), and Isabella Star LeBlanc. Grier rose to prominence in the 1970s when she appeared in blaxploitation flicks like Coffy and Foxy Brown. She’s continued to work over the years, but had something of a comeback in 1997 when she starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.

Pet Sematary Prequel Plot (Feel Free To Assume I Meant Burial Plot, Like a Pun) 

While we don’t have all the details about the Pet Sematary prequel (we don’t even know the title, but I’m going to guess it’s something like Pet Semetary: Resurrection), Variety does have a brief description saying that the film will “serve as an origin story to the Stephen King novel about a family that discovers a rather disturbing graveyard in the woods behind their home.”

Pet Sematary is one of Stephen King’s most popular books, and it has the distinction (mostly cooked up by a marketing department) that it’s the one book that actually scared King when he was writing it. That may or may not be entirely true, but the basic gist is that King thought the book was too bleak and threw it in the trashcan. However, when his contract with his publisher stipulated he needed something new, he decided to submit Pet Sematary. And I’m glad he did, because it’s my personal favorite Stephen King novel.

I do think there’s plenty of room built into King’s story for a prequel – the burial ground that raises the dead has been there for a long, long time, so delving into the history is a neat idea. I look forward to checking this out whenever it arrives.

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