Salem’s Lot Review: Amblin-Style Vampire Entertainment

Vampires overrun small-town America in Salem’s Lot, an entertaining and propulsive adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel.

As they carry the wooden box down stone steps into the cellar, one of the delivery men complains about the heaviness of the box, but that’s probably a crack he makes on every job. While the two men do get spooked out in the cellar, that’s more a product of imagination and stories told at a bar than anything tangible that happens. How were the delivery men supposed to know that they were carrying evil and destruction into their very own backyard? They never saw the vampire’s hand that crept out between the broken wooden planks of the box. 

Salem’s Lot is an adaptation of King’s second published novel of the same name about the Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot becoming overrun by vampires. The genesis of the novel came when King, still a school teacher at the time, was teaching Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” for a class on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature and one night at family dinner wondered out loud what would happen if Dracula came to the Small-town America in the Twentieth Century. A seminal work of horror literature, it is the one that solidified many of the recurrent tropes in King’s work – evil lurking underneath a small Maine town, writer protagonist, precocious children, bullies, abusive families, rag-tag groups of heroes, and slang-heavy Americana. The novel has been filmed twice before as television miniseries, in 1979 (directed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper) and 2004.

While King super fans may balk at certain changes made for the 2024 version, for the most part it is a spiritually faithful, but watered-down adaptation of the property. Dauberman, whose credits have appeared as a co-screenwriter for King adaptations  IT and IT: Chapter Two, and various Conjuringverse entries, gives the movie a fast-moving, adventurous Amblin Entertainment feeling, and displays a good handle on mood and atmosphere, if not a weakness for human interactions and character. It’s more entertaining than frightening, like a trip through a haunted location on a Crisp October night. 

Like the previous iterations, 2024’s Salem’s Lot follows Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), a novel writer returning to Jerusalem’s Lot for the first time since the age of nine, when he was sent away to live with extended family after his parent’s death in a car accident. Pullman is an amiable presence, playing Ben with a melancholy vulnerability and hauntedness. Soon after arriving in town he becomes infatuated with Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), a local girl struggling against the confines of a misogynistic boss and an emotionally controlling mother and dreaming of becoming a real estate agent and finally getting out of the Lot. He also becomes friends with the wise and understanding school teacher Matthew Burke (Bill Camp). 

Unfortunately, in addition to Ben, the town has two other new residents: unctuous antique dealer Richard Straker (Pilou Asbæk), and Kurt Barlow (Alexander Ward), whom no one has managed to catch a glimpse of. One day, Ralphie Glick goes missing while walking home with his older brother Danny, almost immediately after they turned down the offer of a ride from Straker. His body is never found. A week later, Danny suddenly passes away from anemia. But the night of his funeral he shows up outside the window of schoolmate Mark Petrie’s (Jordan Preston Carter) window, asking him to play. Mark immediately recognizes the symptoms from his horror comic books: Vampirism. 

The Glick boys are not the only residents of Salem’s Lot to develop symptoms of the undead variety. Burke becomes suspicious following a near-death encounter, and enlists the help of Ben, Susan, Mark, the logical Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard) and alcoholic priest Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey). The fight against Straker and Barlow soon becomes a fight for the town, with the residents either being turned into vampires or fleeing for safer pastures. 

King often described Salem’s Lot as “Peyton Place meets Dracula,” Peyton Place being a 1960s Soap Opera about the residents of a New England town. Interspersed with the main action of the novel the reader is given tangents into the unhappy lives of Salem’s Lot residents, showing the human iniquity and abuse that Straker and Barlow were able to feed upon. While the movie’s dialogue does pay lip service to the rot lying underneath the Idyllic small town, it does not paint as expansive a portrait as King’s work. Due to the confines of a feature length run time, much is streamlined and condensed from the source material. Dauberman places his attention on the action set pieces, which gives the movie an entertaining, zippy pace, but distracts from the human element of the story. The characters, including Salem’s Lot and the Marsten House, are left archetypal and shallow.

As Salem’s Lot concerns vampires, most of the movie takes place at night. Despite being shot digitally, the cinematography is clear and polished. The chiaroscuro lighting gives the audience the ability to see the main character’s face as they, for example, walk through a dusty cellar, but not whatever may lurk behind them. In the Marsten House the lighting is a fantastical red and teal green, giving the space an alien quality, as though it existed on another plane of existence. The camera glides purposefully around the action, working to create a breathless sense of unease in the audience. 

Salem’s Lot was filmed at the end of 2021 and originally scheduled for a release Labor Day 2022, before being delayed and eventually shunted to streaming on Max. Usually, news of a movie sitting on the shelf for two years would spell a stinker. Not so with Salem’s Lot. The movie is a crackling work of entertainment, with propulsive, enthusiastically constructed set pieces and a strong foundation in its classic source material. Make sure to watch it with a large group of friends. This is a movie I could imagine playing very well with a crowd. 

Salem’s Lot will be available to watch on Max from October 3, 2024. In the UK and Ireland, the film will have a theatrical release on October 11.