Daniel´s B Movie Summer Madness: Pet Graveyard ( 2019 )

One thing i really appreciate during summer sitting outside in the sun is a fresh baked apple pie, especially combined with a fresh cup of coffee. I do love blueberry pie as well or strawberry pie, it´s just that apple pie have always been a personal favourite of mine since i was a child. In my youth i used to go to cafés to get coffee and pie, this was always standard for us if we for example visitied the city of Gothenburgh here in Sweden. This was before we would go into the cinema because i loved watching movies in this city, they had so much more films to choose between in cinemas compared to my hometown. Of course we spent hours as well in the physical movie shop Movieline ( Scandinavia´s biggest movie store ) that was found in the harbor of the city of Gothenburgh. It was here at Movieline i would buy most of my physical films and especially look for independent movies or low budget B movies. At some occations i would buy bigger budget films as well but i always appreciated low budget, especially finding titles that i have never heard of. For example it was in this store i bought my DVD copy of the independent horror film Boo in the summer of 2006. The film was originally released in 2005 but i had not seen it before so i decided to give it a chance. Boo turned out to be a horror movie taking place during the Halloween weekeend at an abandoned hospital. This is director Anthony C, Ferrante ( director of all the Sharknado movies ) first full feature film as a director, and considering this is a low budget horror film it looks pretty good. I especially enjoyed the abandoned hospital scenes, a great location for a Halloween weekend inspired horror film. If you want to check out Boo you can watch this film for free on Plex. As some of you might remember i have done a segment in this movie review blog several years during summer, and that is the segment known as Daniel´s B Movie Summer Madness. I decided to end this summer with a review of the 2019 independent horror film Pet Graveyard. Is this a  hidden gem among horror releases or is this simply a terrible horror film?

Social media influencer Jeff Newman ( David Cotter ) want his big break to get more viewers on his channel. He have learned about an online ritual. where you may visit someone you miss on the other side while killing yourself in a particular way. If you follow the ritual rules someone in the group will ressurect you back from the dead. Jeff decides to do this ritual with some chosen individuals on camera, not knowing the serious consequences.

The poster of Pet Graveyard kind of tricked me. When i first saw this movie poster my first reaction was:- This almost looks like a Pet Semetary rip off. And yes, i would imagine this was something they used for promotion for this film considering that they did release the 2019 remake the same year as Pet Graveyard ( plus this film title feels like a rip off as well from Pet Sematary ). Ok, so there is one similar detail to both of these films. Humans get resurrected from death in both films but in a completely different way. Other than that there are no other simiralities between these films. How would i describe Pet Graveyard ? Imagine a social media influencer version of the 1990 science fiction psychological horror film Flatliners, and instead of medical students we have young people who have no education ( except for one nurse student ) on how the human body works. And these are the people prepared to kill themselves to meet dead family members while not knowing if it works coming back to life? While i watched this film i thought to myself:- Why would anyone risk their life for a social media influencer? Maybe im getting too old or im not open for taking risks, i can´t say that this concept works for this film. The way they killed themselves looks pretty silly by using plastic suffocation, but apparently this is the only way to see your loved ones. The resurrection part also looks pretty silly. The best part of this film is actually when we see the characters crossing over to the other side, at least some scenes with a masked figure looking like the Grim Reaper have a small portion of fun horror scenes. What about the acting? In general pretty boring performances, where actress Jessica Otoole gives the only descent acting performance. I have to be honest this is not a good horror film. There is an interesting idea of ressurection and with a stronger plot it could have worked. Director Becca Hirani made a better impact on me with her acting in the independent horror movie The Loch Ness Horror than this film. Pet Graveyard is not completely terrible but extremely boring.

Rating: DD