Salem's Lot (15)
Director: Gary Dauberman
Screenplay: Gary Dauberman, Stephen King
Starring: Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Jordan Preston Carter
Running time: 114 minutes
Cinema release
Review: David Stephens
If you’re a proud member of Generation X (or older) and a longtime horror fan, you’re quite likely to have a special place in your heart for Salem’s Lot. Maybe not for Stephen King’s book (as good as it is), but if you were in the UK and watching good ol’
BBC1 on Monday, September 7th, 1981, at 9.25 pm, then you were lucky enough to catch the two-part miniseries premiere of Tobe Hooper’s version of the novel. Sure we got it a year or so later after the US networks, but it was a simpler time back then. Starring 70s icon David Soul and classic actor James Mason, it captured the attention of horror-hungry Brits like nothing before on the anodyne network channels of that age and was the talk of the playgrounds and water coolers for months. It played a pivotal part in creating the so-called “Haunted Generation“ in the UK, the name given to those of us who were lightly traumatised by spooky media in the 70s and 80s during our formative years and carried those feelings to adulthood. Enough of that though, here’s a new version of that story, which has had its own traumatic experience during the past few years. Shot mostly at the start of 2022, it was originally set to be released in cinemas in September of that year, but the date was pushed back so often that most people assumed it was going to be scrapped by Warners as a tax loss (like “Batgirl”). Eventually, it found a home in HBO-Max… which we don’t have (official) access to in the UK… so we’re getting a cinema release instead. Good luck or bad mojo? Let’s decide…
It’s 1975 and in the small Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot (shortened by most inhabitants to “Salem’s Lot” or just “The Lot”), two new visitors have just rolled in. Richard Straker (Pilou Asbæk) has just procured an antique store in town and bought the “haunted” Marsten house that overlooks the community. Writer Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) has also returned, being a local in the town before he was orphaned in an accident during his childhood. He starts a relationship with Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), who is desperate to escape the clingy confines of the town and her mother’s selfish nature. But Straker has ulterior motives in literally setting up shop, arranging for a mysterious piece of furniture (packed in soil) to be delivered to his basement. He’s also stalking the local kids and kidnaps one to enable his sinister master (Kurt Barlow played by Alexander Ward) to begin to infect the community with an unnatural blood-lust. When the mortality rate starts to rise, young horror fan Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) knows exactly what’s happening, but will anyone else realise in time to stop it?
As noted above, this isn’t the first rodeo for Salem’s Lot. Along with the Tobe Hooper miniseries, there’s also the 2004 miniseries (largely forgotten, even with Donald Sutherland, Rob Lowe, and Rutger Hauer in it), the Larry Cohen sequel in 1987 (A Return to Salem’s Lot), and even the recent Chapelwaite in 2021 was a (sort of) prequel. The point being that this version needs to have something special going for it to capture the imagination. And unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s not that it’s not well made from a technical perspective or badly acted (despite some horrible dialogue). There’s some good evocation of the 70s, with the soundtrack and location work. A couple of sequences are also quite imaginatively handled and quite marvellous to watch. The abduction of Ralphie Glick plays out like a shadow-puppet play, with only the silhouettes of the characters being seen against the setting sun in the spooky forest. In addition to this, some jump scares work well and there’s a humdinger of an image where a character’s face is framed against the sky by the hole they’ve just made in a vampire’s head. The shot of Ben suddenly flanked by bloodsuckers on the high street is nice, as is the sequence where Mark is trapped in his treehouse by his undead classmates. So what goes wrong with it as a whole then?
The main problem here is that, well, we’ve seen it all before. At some points in the film, you’ll be reminded of (better) films like The Lost Boys and 30 Days of Night with the visuals and the tone. In addition to that, the concept of small-town-taken-over-by-vampires just seems old hat now. It was a fresh and exciting scenario for a modern-day horror back in the 70s and 80s, but now we’ve been spoilt with umpteen other projects with similar circumstances and on much bigger scales. Think of the similarly themed The Strain, Daybreakers, Stake Land, etc, etc. Setting the film in the original timeframe doesn’t erase those projects from memory. It needed some new twists or something different to stand out from other bloodsucking fables. To be fair, there are some distinct changes from the book (and both miniseries). Doc Cody is gender-switched to Alfre Woodard and her foul-mouthed take on the character is quite entertaining, being one of the few personalities with a bit of realistic grit, depth, and credibility. But most of the other updates and changes made just don’t help the movie at all.
One very weird decision is to minimise the importance of the Marsten House. In the book and miniseries, the building was almost a member of the cast, with an intricate lore and stated by Ben to be a malignant entity that attracts evil. But here, despite it looming over the town and looking creepy, It barely gets any screen time. People just tiptoe into the basement and run out again. Instead, another location is chosen for the home of evil, which is just bizarre, despite its significance to the time period. Another notable point is the upgrade of Mark Petrie to Vampire-Slayer extraordinaire. Sure, he was always a tough cookie in the story, but here he offs more vamps in an hour than Buffy managed in 2 seasons! He shows more intent in staking his ex-friend than he does in avenging his parents. Slightly off. The story lent itself to the miniseries format because it was so rich in subplots and atmosphere. That’s all lost for the most part as previously important characters such as Larry Crockett and Ned Tebbets are reduced to seconds-long bit parts. There is a neat (if unlikely) twist involving Susan’s mother but at the expense of another character being killed way too easily and early in the plot.
On the whole, the movie tends to be underwhelming. This is purely a biased opinion, but there’s nothing here to match the creepiest moments of the Hooper miniseries. Ralphie Glick floating eerily at the window whilst scratching glass, Mike Ryerson rocking in a chair before hissing “Sssleeep with the dead, teacher”, the peerless jump scare with Barlow in the jail cell. Nothing matches those moments here. Admittedly, the red-pin-prick eyes of the afflicted are quite scary (if very much a trope), but the floating/flying just looks silly (which is why it’s probably used sparingly) and the effect where crucifixes glow like holy lightsabers just can’t be watched with a straight face. The main themes from King’s book are still there, the slow death of Smalltown USA (with vampirism standing in for drugs and crime), and the distrust of outside influences. But they’re mostly lost in the rush to get on with the neck-biting. Incidentally, can anyone explain just what the point of the antiques shop is in this version? It’s entirely superfluous to the plot. Straker might as well have saved his money for all the good it does.
The cast does their best but actors such as Makenzie Leigh and Pullman just feel wasted when spouting the perfunctory or purely expositional dialogue. There’s no real depth or colour to the roles. Straker in particular feels one-dimensional as a bad guy and Asbæk might as well have stood on the high street twirling his (admittedly impressive) moustache, saying “Mwah, hah, hah. I’m a vampire’s thrall. Come to me kiddies.” This all comes across as negative and disappointing, but the director/writer (Gary Dauberman, from IT and The Conjuring franchises) has enough talent and is genre-savvy to make it almost worthwhile. The 70s era is immaculately represented, feeling close to Stand By Me or Derry from IT in many scenes. But it just doesn’t match previous versions or the source material, and if truth be told, so many other projects have ripped off the format that it doesn’t feel like anything special at all. If you haven’t read the book or seen any of the miniseries, it is quite possible that you’ll be perfectly happy to settle down for a Halloween watch for this fine-but-average adaptation and enjoy it for what it’s worth. Otherwise, that’s yer Lot.
