Pet Graveyard 2019 * * Stars

Director: Rebecca Matthews
Year: 2019
Rated NR
Rating: * * Stars
Cast: Rita Siddiqui, Romulus Stoicescu, David Cotter

"After three minutes, wake us up". Uh yeah, after 100 minutes of the flick I'm about to review, I was awake but turned off the DVD player and moved along quickly.

Anyway, four people who have lost loved ones, decide to kill themselves. They want to visit said loved ones and then somehow return from the dead. Too bad you can't cheat eternal rest because the cheaply concocted Grim Reaper is hastily waiting for them. That's the blueprint for 2019's Pet Graveyard, my latest write-up. In all sincerity, "Graveyard" feels like one of the best student films ever made. Sadly, that's just not a compliment.

Directed by a rookie (Rebecca Matthews) and having very little to do with graveyards, Stephen King, or pets (there is that one skinless cat with glowing red eyes), Pet Graveyard's title and poster image sort of rips off Pet Sematary. Yup, you have to wonder if there was some kind of mini lawsuit involved.

Organically, "Graveyard" is a low budget endeavor in the vein of those late, Amityville Horror movies and Saturday the 14th. It's also the type of far-fetched, trepidation fare where the filmmakers suspend disbelief and overall logic (you need more than just a bogus oxygen mask and a pep talk to revive a lifeless twenty-something). Director Matthews doesn't come off as the spokesperson for novelty here. Viewing "Graveyard", it looks as though she saw any Final Destination or 1990's Flatliners one too many times.

Bottom line: Pet Graveyard is decently plotted, has Evil Dead-style voices (I kind of like that), some unique opening title cards, and acting that could have been worse (considering the blase blase script by Suzy Spade). But with minimal jump scares, minimal locations or set pieces, and a musical score that basically consists of one chord ("ominous" came up in the subtitles), Pet Graveyard needs to be "buried" in the abundant, direct-to-video "world". Rating: 2 stars.

Written by Jesse Burleson