Salem’s Lot is based on the novel by world-famous author Stephen King. There have been adoptions of it before. Namely a television mini-series. About forty or so years ago. Like everything else lately, it’s got a remake coming out on Max a Warner Brothers Officiate streaming service. It used to be called HBO Max. This time around it’s modernized a little for today’s audience.

Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) an author of fictional novels returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot, or Salem for short, and it’s not like when he left it many years before. He’s trying to get inspiration for a new book. Instead, he meets a pretty young woman named Susan (Makenzie Leigh) and gets wrapped up in a case of missing townsfolk. When he discovers why it’s all the inspiration he needs for a new book. A mysterious man Richard Straker (Pilou Asbaek) is hiding a dark secret and the whole town has gotten involved whether they like it or not.

I’m a big fan of horror movies and vampire movies in particular. There is just something about this subgenre of horror that I love, starting way back with Bela Ligosi’s Dracula. Ever since vampire films have been something I seek out as much as werewolf films. Stephen King likes to put his spin on popular horror subgenres and Salem’s Lot is no different. He loves to set his stories in small northeastern New England towns like Derry and Salem of which I’ve lived in both towns in New Hampshire when I was a kid. They are great settings for spooky stories like this one. So why not a vampire tale in a small town?

They’ve been set in LA, New York, New Orleans, and Paris over the many years. More often than not vampires are larger-than-life characters like Lestat, played by Tom Cruise, in Interview With A Vampire, or Dracula, played by Gary Oldman, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Quite often though they feature some random vampire-like, Barlow, in Salem’s Lot. Either or doesn’t make any difference to me as long as the film is good. This one is a bit anticlimactic for my tastes.

Besides Pullman and Leigh’s characters, there is a decent cast of characters played by some fantastic character actors. Bill Camp plays a teacher who gets involved in the town mystery, Alfre Woodard plays a doctor who has to treat some unusual wounds on her patients, and William Sadler plays the town sheriff, but he’s a bit scared of what’s happening in his town and Jordan Preston Carter plays Mark Petrie a boy whose friends go missing so he starts to investigate their disappearances. They all get embroiled in this town nightmare. The cast all around is pretty solid.

Vampire movies have all but worn themselves thin, similar to zombie films. Audiences are pretty tired of them. It takes a crazy story or an off-the-wall character to make them worth watching anymore. This story based on King’s novel was a bit formulaic even though it’s updated for a modern audience. The end of the story is pretty much set up earlier in the film. An exchange about a drive-in theater by a couple of characters is all you need to know to figure out the ending of the story. Or having read the book yourself.  I’m a fan of Kings’ books and the adaptations of them into movies. I just wish they were all as easy to figure out as this one was.

Besides the predictable story, the characters weren’t that interesting and the storylines that could have progressed had this film had more time to develop them would have made me care for them. There is a burgeoning romance that goes nowhere. Also, the most interesting character is hardly used in the movie, until the end. I know this is a misnomer but I think this could have been a little longer to flesh out the characters more. I’m a big fan of Bill Camp and he was definitely underutilized that’s for sure.

Salem’s Lot tries to capture the feel and vibe of King’s original story but fails to create characters I was invested in all that much. Once I started caring about them they disappeared or didn’t come back until the end of the movie. That annoyed me big time. Overall the villain was very good or very memorable for that matter.  I don’t know if it’s me or not, but I think King’s stories don’t always translate to the big screen or streaming service for that matter. This vampire tale was a bit underwhelming and that’s sad because when done right this genre can be great.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen