Directed By Gary Dauberman

Starring – Lewis Pullman, Spencer Treat Clark, Pilou Asbaek

The Plot – Ben Mears (Pullman), a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, also known as ‘Salem’s Lot, has returned after twenty-five years to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad experience as a child. He soon discovers that an ancient evil has also come to town and its turning the residents into vampires. He vows to stop the plague of undead and save the town.

Rated R for bloody violence and adult language

Salem’s Lot | Official Trailer | Max (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Being that this is adapted from the pages of a Stephen King novel, it would be tragic if the film didn’t capture the small town feel that surmise most of his films, as well as abundance of cliches that tie together so many of his stories. In this instance, cliches is a good thing because it means that actual time and effort was placed towards conjuring the one of a kind atmosphere that ‘Salem’s Lot’ elicited, and with the additional benefit of small town claustrophobia, where it feels like everyone knows everyone’s business, for better or worse, cements an isolated benefit from the rest of the world that elevates the tension of its conflict, where the events of this quiet and tight-knit community feel epic with impactful stakes and overwhelming circumstances. Those circumstances come to a head during the movie’s climax, which takes place at a drive-in of all places, affording it not only cool points for this critic’s love of drive-ins personally, but also stylistic points to the movie’s production values, which harbor unique settings and artistic merit in every single shot throughout the engagement. The latter of those certainly elicits itself in cinematography with no shortage of radiant personality, whether in the luscious lavishness of colorful versatility utilized in a consistency among the movie’s texture, or the impeccable framing surprisingly attaining some of my favorite and most meaningful shots from a horror movie, this year, the production does a remarkable job of bringing big screen appeal to streaming captivity, and as a result makes this the single most hypnotic adaptation of this story, for the capabilities in budget that they clearly had that its predecessors didn’t. Lastly, while much of the characters are tragically underdeveloped or one-dimensional, Jordan Preston Carter brings a legitimacy in cool factor to his role as Mark that single-handedly kept me interested in this film, regardless of the scripts own problems with storytelling. Part of the charms certainly come from the film’s ability to write him as a kid character who actually takes charge and doesn’t become paralyzed by fear, but so much more appreciation stems from his abundance of bountiful charisma and stern conviction that he supplants to every committed delivery, attaining a child performance that for once didn’t detract from the mood of the atmosphere, instead elevating it with a personable warmth that effortlessly earned him my single favorite character of the entire movie.

NEGATIVES

Compressing a 439-page novel or a three-hour miniseries into a 110-minute feature length film comes with its own abundance of conflicting problems, but none more troubling than the breakneck pace of this film, which regretfully shortchanges all of the noteworthy developments towards keeping anything from feeling naturally rendered or attained. This is most noticeable on the exposition, with characters attaining a paranormal level of intellect to how these vampires work, but also the consistency of the presentational editing, with little moments between physical conflicts to let the stakes breathe, or the tension build back up for a long-term payoff. Some people might consider this a positive because urgency is inflicted to the engagement, but it comes at the cost of often rushing too many of the story’s most vital moments, where nothing attains a lasting memory even minutes after they happened. Then there’s the absence of characterization and building, where after the initial opening ten minutes to the movie, not a single solitary scene is paid to learning anything about these people, resulting in underwhelming conflicts that continuously flatline, despite attaining the kind of tension and vulnerability needed to enhance their appeal. This is most felt whenever a character is unceremoniously deposited, in which I didn’t feel a single ounce of empathy or loss in the ways they’re savagely eviscerated, making them feel as cold and mysterious as their paranormal adversaries, which they are another problem in themselves. I can forgive the fact that the vampires in the film are unfortunately plagued by C.G-heavy designs that occasionally make them come across as comical and compromising to the movie’s tone, but what I can’t overlook is the bloodless consistency of kills that we sadly rarely get to visually experience, wasting every measurement of its coveted R-rating that often sets so many of these vampire movies apart. As if the aforementioned editing of the cluttered sequencing in storytelling wasn’t enough, the way the cuts during physicality abruptly cut away to obscure violence is truly criminal, especially considering the novel describes these interactions in gruesome detail, with the weakest kind of C.G blood merely used as an aftershock in visual cue that something unforgiving just transpired, to which we would’ve otherwise never known. It makes me think that a lot has been removed from this finished product, as nothing contained and depicted even come close to deserving a rating of that kind, with sanitized scrubbing of graphic violence that could’ve allowed it to stand out, but instead serves as a glaring distraction to the integrity of the material, for which I’ve seen more audacious imagery during an episode of ‘Stranger Things’. That comparison isn’t accidental, as the movie’s tonal consistency feels right alongside Netflix’s signature show, but in the worst kind of ways that simply don’t appeal to its brand of horror, where instead of darkly foreboding and menacing, Dauberman instead opts for the hip and edgy, which deduces its film towards feeling primed for all ages, instead of utilizing the macabre of one of Stephen King’s most viscerally charged novels. Finally, everything I’ve said negatively about this film culminates to an inconsistency among its pacing that somehow makes this film feel like another three hour adaptation of the ‘Salem’s Lot’ property, despite so much of its material being sacrificed to accommodate a run time. As to where I was thoroughly invested in the opening scenes of the first act, during character introductions, the second act quickly dissolves interest by such a repetitious structure that it can’t avoid from so many of trimmed fat surmising similar scenes and sequences back-to-back, allowing boredom to set in quickly to the experience, which frequently manipulated the minutes towards feeling we were a lot further in the engagement than reality revealed. It picks up slightly during the aforementioned climax, but by then a lack of character interest and overwhelming artificiality in physicality (Especially one character being able to evade being bitten despite three vampires pinning him down) keeps it from garnering the kind of momentum that would at least send audiences home with a lasting impression, where the only satisfying relief I attained was in the fade to black that conveyed it was over.

OVERALL
‘Salem’s Lot’ isn’t the worst of horror remakes, but as a miniseries turned feature length film, sacrifices many of the uniquely vital elements to its storytelling that proved Stephen King was so much more than a one trick pony. Despite one of my favorite child characters of the year, and production values that stimulated a lot of transfixing style to scenic sequences, the film proves it has no bite, with flat characters and scrubbed gore that never satisfies the hunger of its horror hounds, deducing this contemporary adaptation to another for the disappointing pile that isn’t even worth the price of a Max subscription to seek it out.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-