Is it a prequel to the original, or a prequel to that god awful remake? Either way, it's a pure cash grab. I thought the prequel element in the original as told by Judd was plenty sufficient as is.

I think it's a prequel to the god awful remake. I don't know whether I should look forward to it or not. The 2019 one really wasn't great, even with a good cast. They have another decent cast for the prequel, so it's possible that it won't suck, but who knows.

I don't think a good cast can make up for a bad continuity. If it was a prequel to the original, it might stand a chance. As you know, remakes tend to be so bad that things often end up going back to the original canon as to not piss off the fans, so that would be a wise choice. And they should get the original director back. She said she would be interested in making a part 3.

If she is involved with the prequel, yeah, that would be a big step in the right direction. I hope she watches the excellent documentary Unearthed and Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary, to get herself into the right frame of mind. I liked that documentary a lot when I saw it a few years ago. It is on Screambox now, apparently. I recommend the bejesus out of it.

This thread made me think of The Tommyknockers. Remember that? It's not exactly the pinnacle of Stephen King's storytelling career, but it has its moments. I remember liking the book more than the movie, personally. I am reminded of it by this thread just because of the idea of a normal modern person finding something ancient and extremely unusual, somewhere back in the woods behind/near their house. With the Tommyknockers it wasn't a Micmac burial ground, but a long-buried alien spacehip that had crashed in ancient times. Tommmyknockers is almost like a cross between The Thing and Pet Sematary, in that way, now that I'm thinking about this...

Wikipedia says Tommyknockers is basically a re-telling of Quatermass and the Pit, set in Maine, and... I can't argue with that. There was also a story by a guy named Clifford Simak that was pretty similar. I had it in a collection of science fiction short stories, when I was a kid. OK, I found it, it is called The Big Front Yard, by Clifford Simak. I wonder if it was one of the inspirations for Phantasm? I have never come across any discussion of that idea online, but it is certainly a possibility. Here, this is about The Big Front Yard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Front_Yard