SALEM'S LOT (2024)

Studio:   Max/New Line Cinema
Director: Gary Dauberman
Writer:   Gary Dauberman
Producer: James Wan, Michael Clear, Roy Lee, Mark Wolper
Stars:    Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard, John Benjamin Hickey, Bill Camp, Jordan Preston Carter, Nicholas Crovetti, Spencer Treat Clark, William Sadler, Pilou Asbaek

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Residents of a small town in Maine come together to combat a vampire who is transforming their friends and family members.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

R.T. Straker, a human familiar who recently moved from London to the small Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot with his vampire master Kurt Barlow disguised as antique store owners, tasks workman Royal Snow with delivering a mysterious crate to the infamous, reportedly haunted Marsten House where Straker now lives. Unbeknownst to Snow and his partner Hank Peters, the crate secretly contains Barlow's coffin.

Returning to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot for the first time since his parents were killed by a drunk driver when he was young, author Ben Mears stops at Larry Crockett's realty office to find a place to stay. Larry's secretary Susan Norton recognizes Ben and takes an interest in him before recommending he rent a vacant room from Eva Miller.

At Stanley Street Elementary School, new student Mark Petrie defends himself against bully Richie Boddin. Teacher Matt Burke breaks up the altercation. Mark continues befriending classmate Danny Glick as well as Danny's younger brother Ralphie.

Susan sees Ben doing research on the Marsten House at the library when she goes there with her mother Ann. Librarian Mabel Werts gossips to the two women about Ben's history. To drop a hint that she's interested in him, Susan makes a point to mention out loud that she'll be seeing a movie at the drive-in that night. Ben later meets Susan there and the two of them begin a romantic relationship.

Straker abducts Ralphie Glick as the boy walks home from Mark's house with his brother Danny. Straker subsequently turns over Ralphie to Barlow as a sacrifice.

One week after Ralphie's disappearance, Barlow lures Danny outside his house and attacks him. Because his health and behavior become worrisome, Danny's parents Marjorie and Tony take him to see Dr. Cody at the hospital. Danny hungrily devours a blood bag before dying suddenly.

Following his funeral, Danny resurrects as a vampire to attack gravedigger Mike Ryerson. Matt Burke soon notices Mike acting strangely at a bar, so he brings him to his house for the night until they can consult Dr. Cody in the morning. Matt sees bite wounds on Mike's neck and later spies someone sneaking into Mike's window from outside.

Having previously befriended each other, Matt goes to see Ben, who is sleeping with Susan, to tell them about Mike's condition and his suspicion of vampirism. The three of them return to Matt's house to find Mike dead and his bite wounds healed. Matt theorizes Mike will transform into a vampire soon. He then summons Sheriff Parkins Gillespie and Dr. Cody to the house to examine the body. Matt connects Mike's condition to Danny's unusual anemia death. Cody notices Ben holding a cross.

Danny floats outside Mark's bedroom window demanding to be let in. After Danny mentions Barlow and attacks, Mark repels him with a cross. Vowing to free Danny, Mark uses comic books to research vampire "rules" and determines he has to kill Barlow.

Now a vampire, Mike returns to Matt's house and attacks him while also mentioning Barlow. Matt repels Mike with a cross and banishes him from his home by revoking his invitation.

Dr. Cody returns to Matt, Ben, and Susan after learning Mike's body went missing from the morgue. Their group concludes Barlow is a vampire, Straker is his servant, and the Glick boys were two victims. Ben proposes exhuming Danny's body to prove the boy became a vampire, but Cody suggests monitoring the body of his mother Marjorie Glick, who recently died under circumstances similar to Mike's, to see if she will resurrect instead.

Matt's separate investigation into Straker and Barlow leads him to the Marsten House. Matt finds Mark there conducting his own investigation with a wooden stake. Barlow suddenly attacks Matt while Straker captures Mark.

Cody, Ben, and Susan watch over Marjorie's body. Marjorie resurrects as a vampire and bites Cody. Ben and Susan use a cross to burn Marjorie into ash. Before she can become fully infected, Ben and Susan quickly administer a rabies shot that saves Cody by counteracting the vampire bite.

Upon finding Matt's house swarmed by vampires, Ben, Susan, and Cody consult alcoholic priest Father Callahan for help. Having escaped the Marsten House, Mark joins everyone at the church to tell them Matt is now a vampire. Mark adds that he killed Straker, and says he plans to kill Barlow, too.

Ben, Susan, Cody, Callahan, and Mark search the Marsten House. When Matt attacks, Ben stakes him through his heart.

Cody decides to consult Parkins for help while Mark and Susan return to their respective homes to warn their parents they are in danger. Callahan instructs everyone to be at his church at sundown since consecrated ground will protect them.

Cody appeals to Parkins, but he insists the town was dying anyway, so he decides to run away from the growing vampire threat. Meanwhile, Ben and Susan discover Ann replaced Straker as Barlow's new human familiar. Mike bites Susan before Ben can pull her to safety.

Mark's parents Henry and June disbelieve Mark and Callahan's claims of vampires. Barlow enters the Petrie home and kills Henry, June, and Callahan. Mark flees to his treehouse where he is surrounded by transformed children who taunt him.

Ben rushes Susan to Cody at the church. Cody tells Ben that Susan is too far gone to be saved by a rabies shot. Susan runs outside. Ben follows her, but he returns to the church when he sees the streets crawling with transformed residents. Mike attacks Ben, so Ben kills him. The sheriff's dead body is thrown through a church window while Ben and Cody hide.

In the morning, Ben and Cody return to the Petrie house to find a note from Mark saying he is going after Barlow again. Ben and Cody find Mark after he searches the antique store and ends up killing Danny.

Noticing there are no vehicles on the streets, Ben, Cody, and Mark realize the vampires are using cars for coffins and hiding out at the drive-in. Ben finds Susan sleeping in one of the trunks there, but he is hesitant to kill her. Cody offers to do it instead, but Ann suddenly shoots her with a shotgun.

When the sun goes down behind the drive-in screen, the vampires rise. Mark uses a car to knock down the screen, which exposes the setting sun again. The vampires burst into flames. Mark runs over Ann to rescue Ben.

Ben and Mark find Barlow's coffin hidden in a van, but the vampire escapes before they can stake him. Susan attacks Ben while he hides in the drive-in office with Mark. Ben finally musters the courage to kill Susan.

Barlow attacks Mark. Ben saves the boy by staking Barlow through the back of his head and then through his heart. With no survivors left in town, Ben and Mark decide to drive away from Jerusalem's Lot and disappear.

---

Review:

"Salem's Lot," both the original novel and this third adaptation, comes well stocked with a nearly complete set of Stephen King standards. Featured player Ben Mears is a troubled author still struggling with imposter syndrome. Having not been there since a childhood tragedy, Ben seeks inspiration by returning to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot, which is, where else, located in rural Maine. Over at the elementary school, folksy English teacher Matt Burke breaks up an altercation between a bully and nerdy new kid Mark. Mark's interest in comic books and painting model monsters earns him a bond with brothers Danny and Ralphie Glick. Meanwhile, Ben begins a bond of a different kind with spunky secretary Susan, who has big dreams of breaking free from small-town shackles. Now all we need is a vampire to move into the haunted old Marsten House on the hill and we'll have all the hallmarks of nostalgia and nefariousness from a summertime spooker by the Master of Horror.

Written for the screen and directed by Gary Dauberman, this version of "Salem's Lot" also comes well stocked with a nearly complete set of scary movie standards, too. Opening titles deliver background exposition through a montage of maps, manifests, and pointed newspaper headlines. Needle drops slip in songs with apropos lyrics from Gordon Lightfoot and Donovan to accent the seventies setting. Then of course we have the sinister sights of glowing-eyed creatures floating outside bedroom windows, necks being bitten in shadowed silhouettes, and a gradual escalation of eerie events until survivors accept their quiet town has been taken over by the undead.

Dauberman appears to have deliberately designed his "Salem's Lot" to have the familiar frights, cinematic style, and palatable plot beats that can easily satiate average appetites for theatrical thrills. What he evidently did not design the film for, however, was to be pared down to a 100-minute runtime that's clearly missing complete chunks of story while keeping crumbs that don't belong on a properly prepared plate.

Tobe Hooper's adaptation of "Salem's Lot" in 1979 and the 2004 update starring Rob Lowe were both made for television as two-part miniseries that ran over three hours each. Dauberman probably had similar plans, because it seems unlikely he would have made "Salem's Lot" this way had he known it would be necessary to squeeze into an arbitrary duration for a Halloween season debut on a streaming service. If he had that mandate ahead of time, he could have slimmed down the script in pre-production instead of banging into the hurdles that come from trying to cut up an epic in the editing room.

This "Salem's Lot" absolutely stuffs itself with characters, none of whom stand out as the "main" one, not even Ben. In addition to the people previously mentioned, the eclectic assortment of residents who appear onscreen includes Sheriff Parkins Gillespie and his deputy Ollie Griffen, alcoholic priest Father Callahan, eager realtor Larry Crockett, gossipy librarian Mabel Werts, Ben's landlady Eva Miller, gravedigger Mike Ryerson, Danny and Ralphie's worried mother Marjorie, random workmen Royal Snow and Hank Peters, Dr. Cody, and that's only half of the roles listed in end credits.

Did you get all of that? Doesn't matter if you didn't. "Salem's Lot" only name checks a couple of them, like a rival for Susan's affections who only appears once to drop a single passive-aggressive insult in Ben's direction, when an adaptation that simply scrubbed out these inessential inclusions would have streamlined the story.

As a consequence of its choppy arrangement, "Salem's Lot" offers few emotional stakes for a viewer to invest in. What with Ben and Susan's budding romance, the budding friendship between Mark and the Glick brothers, the drunk priest's crisis of faith, the cowardly sheriff's crisis of conscience, and several other threads, there aren't enough minutes for everything to matter.

Even though it feels like no individual gets more than four minutes of total screentime, strong performances zero out bony characterizations. Despite struggling to deliver dialogue with a New England drawl, you immediately accept Dr. Cody as an intuitive medical professional purely on the basis of her being played by Alfre Woodard. As knowledgeable schoolteacher Matt Burke, Bill Camp's personable presence just as immediately elevates him from "That Guy" character actor to "Salem's Lot's" unsung hero. Young Jordan Preston Carter similarly does a lot with a little as Mark partly because, like several of the central characters, "Salem's Lot" understands what critical moments are required to make them sympathetic and relatable, even if that's at the expense of leaving every secondary inclusion dangling by a thin thread.

Taken for the final product it is, or rather the final product it was forced to be, it's hard to imagine any alternate 100-minute cut of this content coming out distinctly better. Being blunt, when Hollywood hires Gary Dauberman to helm a film, they're not expecting an arty auteur like David Lynch or a clever magician like M. Night Shyamalan, and neither should an audience. With all due respect he's rightfully earned, Dauberman cut his filmmaking fangs on "Annabelle" and "It" movies. His eyes and ears are tuned for monster movies with mainstream vibes, and "Salem's Lot" plucks out another fluffy feather for that cap. The film isn't overly flashy. It may not be particularly frightening, either. Nevertheless, even its limitations fall within the boundaries to be fleetingly fine fare for a nonchalant night in the dark.

Review Score: 55

---