It's been 20 years since the last adaptation of Salem's Lot so I guess there's a chance that many people exploring the horror genre nowadays will be less familiar with the tale, first presented in a Stephen King novel that remains one of his best, before being turned into a traumatic TV movie directed by Tobe Hooper. There have also been other sojourns into, or near, the town, with A Return To Salem's Lot in the mid-1980s, and King himself expanding on the tale in separate short stories and as part of the threads winding through The Dark Tower book series. So I don't think it should ever be classed as something that cannot be revisited/reworked.
Lewis Pullman is our Ben Mears this time around, a writer who returns to the small town that he lived in for a time as a child. The town, and particularly one large house, has a certain pull to it. Ben forms a connection with Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh) while he is back in town, and befriends a schoolteacher named Matt Burke (Bill Camp). It doesn't take long for these three to notice that something strange is happening around them, with town residents disappearing or acting very odd, as a powerful vampire decides to make Jerusalem's Lot the base for his attempt to turn the USA into his own little Fangtasia.
The second film directed by Gary Dauberman, who helped to make the Annabelle series such a success, and also worked on the screenplay for both chapters of It, the biggest problem with Salem's Lot is something I wouldn't normally tend to complain about. It's far too short. Considering both of the main previous attempts to film this story have clocked in at about the 3-hour mark, this solo movie needs far more than the 114-minute runtime it gets. That becomes very obvious when scenes seem to clash against one another, allowing no time for the proper development of the bigger picture of a town being infected and turned into a ghost town (but, obviously, the ghosts are all vampires).
There are good moments here, all of the actual vampire stuff is well-handled (it's often spooky and inventive, if never actually scary), and the way in which certain scenes are reworked is often surprisingly successful, especially in the change of setting for the big final battle. It's just a shame that the pacing never feels right for most of the runtime, with the exception of a few set-pieces in the second half that you just know the rest of the movie was planned around.
Pullman is decent in the lead role, although he doesn't shine as brightly as some other potential choices (Ben Mears has never been the most memorable King character though, despite the greatness of the story). Leigh is better, with the advantage of being able to comment on a town that she's lived in all her life. Both Bill Camp and Alfre Woodard (playing Dr. Cody) are excellent, feeling quite appropriately like more experienced peers helping the younger leads to deal with a very odd situation, and there are also enjoyable performances from John Benjamin Hickey (as Father Callahan), William Sadler (Sheriff Parker Gillespie), Pilou Asbæk (as Mr. Straker), and Spencer Treak Clark (superbly unnerving as the grave-digger, Mike Ryerson). The other person to mention is Jordan Preston Carter, playing young Mark Petrie with an expected mix of wisdom, anger, and terror. Carter is very good in the role, although a couple of the best moments involving his character are slightly mis-handled, again all to do with the pacing.
Maybe we'll see the full version of this one day, and I don't doubt that there was a lot of extra work done in the editing room here. It's almost like watching a series on a streaming service and accidentally hitting the "play next episode" option twice, leaving you with a gap that you piece together as the ongoing narrative continues. There's still enough to enjoy here, and it's certainly not as bad as many other remakes I could mention. The visuals and atmosphere both have moments of brilliance, but it's clear from the opening credits and very first scenes that this is a film with much more just beyond the edges of the screen that horror fans would love to see.
6/10
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