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This review was made possible by an advance screener of of Salem’s Lot. Salem’s Lot premieres on Max on Thursday, October 3rd.

I have a cat named after Stephen King. Several years ago, my wife decided that she needed a Maine Coon cat. I wasn’t quite as on board with her, given that, well, Maine Coons are expensive and we could just adopt a cat (to her/our credit, the other five cats we have owned together were all rescues/adoptions). But she was adamant that she wanted a big, fluffy, Maine Coon.

So I made her a deal: we could get her Maine Coon if I could name it. You see, I really only know one thing about the state of Maine, and that is that it is where Stephen King is from, and it’s where he sets most of his stories. So I decreed we could get her the cat we wanted if we named him Stephen Kat. 

My wife is actually the bigger Stephen King fan than I am, so she was perfectly fine with this. I just like wordplay. And yes, his name is “Stephen Kat”, not just “Stephen”. Though we do usually just call him “Stevie”. But when I take him to the vet and they call him “Stephen”, I correct them.

I promise I’m here to review a movie. I just… needed to talk about my cat for a second.

This year, Max came out with a new cinematic iteration of King’s Salem’s Lot story. It’s been adapted to film before, but both previous outings were multi-part television miniseries. This Max effort marks the first time Salem’s Lot was adapted straight to a one-shot movie. The film was directed by Gary Dauberman and was co-written by Dauberman and Stephen King himself.

Salem’s Lot tells the tale of a writer named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) who returns to the town where he spent his childhood until an accident occurred that drove him away. Upon returning, he strikes up a quick romance with a woman named Susan (Makenzie Leigh) and a friendship with a teacher named Mr. Burke (Bill Camp). 

While all this is going on, there is a new middle school aged student in town, Mark (Jordan Preston Carter). The first two friends that Mark ends up making are quickly killed (Damn! Killing middle school kids is COLD), and it’s not long before both Ben and Mark realize that Salem’s Lot is becoming a breeding ground for vampires. 

As Mark, Ben, Susan, and Mr. Burke marshal everyone they can get to believe them, it’s a race against time as the vamps start infecting everyone in town. They realize the head vampire behind it all is a man named Barlow (Alexander Ward) who recently moved into town and bought the old scary house that had been empty for ages. Can our heroes survive Barlow’s onslaught? 

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The cast is plentiful with talented performers and new faces doing a great job. Bill Pullman’s son Lewis takes the lead as Ben, and the young Jordan Preston Carter co-leads as Mark. Both prove to be solid hands who carry the movie ably and have good chemistry between them when the two characters get together.

Alfre Woodard is her typical glorious self as the doctor of Jerusalem’s Lot, Dr. Cody. I love seeing her in anything, and she is a joy here, as always. Additionally, Bill Camp, John Benjamin Hickey, and Makenzie Leigh are all given prominent roles and turn in star performances. 

+ Dauberman, mostly known as a screenwriter for the Annabelle, Nun, and It movies, takes just his second ever turn as a director here, and he displays a great knack for making horror from behind the camera. I could make the argument that the film is a bit too dark (in the visual sense, not necessarily thematically), but aside from that, the shooting and framing are all well-done, and the film has its share of decent scares… most notably a scene in Barlow’s basement where we get just a quick flash of Barlow encountering Mr. Burke. It’s brilliantly shot, and for me, the high-point of the movie as far as the frights go!

– I know we are dealing with a story that was originally written almost fifty years ago and is based on a common horror trope, but honestly? The story here is nothing spectacular or ground-breaking. It’s a very… Vampires 101 type of tale. 

We get all the basic conventions. The sleepy town. The coffin full of dirt from the old world. Infection. Blood draining and neck bites. It’s all here. And that’s fine! It’s all fine. If you want to introduce someone to the world of blood-sucking fiends, Salem’s Lot is a perfect place to start. If for some reason you aren’t starting with Dracula or Nosferatu. 

But the problem is that other stories have done vampires a little better or added more to the common tales. Stuff like Fright Night or Near Dark or From Dusk Til Dawn or 30 Days Of Night are all flicks that have a little more flavor. But admittedly, those all came out at least ten years after King wrote Salem’s Lot, so they had it as at least partial inspiration.

– A problem with this new take is that it runs just 113 minutes. Which is a great length for a film, but a very short length to adapt a full book. The previous iterations were much longer and got to be a touch more complete. This version ends up hitting all the big notes, but it also leaves you feeling like you missed a huge time jump.

Jerusalem’s Lot seems to go from “Hey we might have a vampire problem” to “holy crap, the entire town is vampires” awfully quick in this effort. I was lost as to how much time had passed, as it felt like Barlow infected the entire town in about two or three days. It’s not major or anything that’s wildly unbelievable, but it left me a touch bewildered. 

OVERALL

Salem’s Lot is a very good ground-level vampire tale that has a lot of talent on both ends of the camera. The scares and the cinematography are all well-managed, and while the story isn’t exactly doing anything brand new, you have to respect the age of the source material and what Dauberman does with it. 

3 Stars Out Of 5