Salem’s Lot is the newest attempt to adapt the Stephen King novel of the same name. We follow Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) as he returns to his childhood home of Jeruselum Lot and discovers the terrifying vampire Barlow that is terrorizing its citizens. With Pullman, Bill Camp (Matt), Mackenzie Leigh (Susan), Alfre Woodard (Cody), and Jordan Preston Carter (Mark), Salem’s Lot flashes the potential of a worthy Stephen King adaption but leaves a lot of meat on the bones and instead delivers an average flick.
I am not extremely familiar with the source material. I’ve never read the novel or watched the Tobe Hooper miniseries from 1979. Maybe it helps to go into this movie blind because Stephen King’s novels have a notorious track record of being hard to adapt to film. His writing is so in-depth and atmospheric, that it is almost impossible to capture his vision unless you’re Mike Flanagan. Not having the novel in the back of my head helped keep my expectations lower than others, but there were still things that I noticed that rubbed me the wrong way.
Most notably, it feels like a lot of the movie was cut out. It was reported that the first cut was roughly 3 hours long, which was roughly how long the miniseries was. Now, this movie did not need to be that long, but you can feel the cuts in the lack of character development with the lack of relationships being built. Ben and Susan’s relationship doesn’t have the time for us to care about them as deeply as we need to for the emotional moments to hit as they should. The same goes for Matt, who should be another source of emotion but we just can’t care as much when they don’t give us enough character development. Where I really had a problem with this is when people are attacked by Barlow and his army of vampires, the movie cuts away to the next scene. There is no time for us to feel the weight of anything.
Especially in the beginning, this movie establishes that no one is safe from the Barlow. Children are the first to become victims, yet I never felt like the town felt the weight of this. The town itself didn’t seem to feel the weight of anyone’s death which always bothers me, especially when you try to establish this small town vibe. The entire town is picked off (which isn’t shown, and that’s another thing I have a problem with) and we don’t see people mourn their loved ones. Even when a main character dies, the others don’t seem all that upset.
The brief (relative) runtime also meant a lot of backstory had to be cut in favor of action. I had nothing to nitpick but for fans of the book or anyone familiar with the source material felt shorted. There is a medium that needs to be reached where you can keep an audience engaged for long enough to tell enough of the story for people to understand the story beyond a simple plot summary, and this movie didn’t find it.
However, the movie did have very solid performances out of its leads, especially Pullman and Carter. Pullman has been on my radar ever since The Strangers: Prey At Night and he’s been seeing a well-deserved career spike. Jordan Preston Carter was incredibly impressive for his age. He was given so much to do and he did not disappoint in any way.
I was also a fan of a lot of the style of this movie. A lot of this movie looks incredible and is shot in fun, unique ways. While Barlow’s design was not my favorite, I liked the simple grey, glowing yellow eyes of the other vampires. The nights do have a blueish tint which seems to be a standard nowadays, which is pretty neat here. I do appreciate how colors are used, with reds and glowing yellows used to signify certain elements. There are a lot of impressive shots and moments that did make me impressed with the filmmaking.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Salem’s Lot (2024) is an ok movie, especially if you are unfamiliar with the Stephen King novel it’s based on. It has fun action, good performances, and a good aesthetic to it. It does have to squeeze a lot of story into sub 2-hour runtime and because of that, a lot of elements of the story suffer. But for this spooky season, you can do much worse than this adaption of Salem’s Lot
