Salem’s Lot (2024)

An awful mess of a movie, masquerading as a Stephen King Adaption.

Stephen King has written a immense number of books. I, however, may have embarrassingly slipped on my dedicated readership over the past 10 years or so. Throughout my teens to into my thirties, I was reading everything King could pen to paper, but these days, there’s only so much I can read, and with king releasing books every year, I struggle to keep up. There is only three books that I have re-read, and only one that have read more than twice, and that is Salem’s Lot, Kings second released novel. I often ponder why that book in particular drew me in more than the others. Salem’s Lot is fundamentally a tale of small-town life, spotlighting the diverse characters and stories unfolding on the outskirts of Portland, Maine. The story revolves around mysterious events and the arrival of sinister forces, focusing on the impact on the townspeople as a vampire presence begins to spread. It’s these little personal stories playing out, that bring the sleepy little town ot life. And yes, I think that’s what I love most about the novel, the people and the tales they tell as the town falls into darkness.

The 2024 Salem’s Lot film release, from Warner Bros. HBO Max platform, is the third attempt at bringing King’s novel to life. It’s also the first FILM adaption, with the 1979 and 2004 versions both being TV-miniseries. I think from the outset, trying to tackle King in a single film is a bold and risky move. When you think of some of the most successful adaptions of his work, they are generally long form projects, such as mini-series or mutli-film adaptions. Many of the good films, Such as the Shawshank Redemption and The Mist, were adapted from short stories, which is better suited for the short run time of films. Considering two previous version of Salem’s Lot went long-form, you have to ask yourself what cuts need to happen to turn a 439 page book into a 1 hour 54 minute film. As it turns out, quite a lot. Probably too much.

Lets talk about the creative team behind the new adaption. The screen writer and director is Gary Dauberman, who had a spot of luck adapting King’s IT in 2017 and 2019, when he tackled the scripts for this two part film adaption. He also penned the successful Annabelle series, directing the 2019 sequel Annabelle Comes Home. However, that is the extent of his on-film experience, with Salem’s Lot being his second film. There have been plenty of successful screen writers turn directors, but lets not mistake one discipline for the other. Writing and directing are two very different jobs, and I can’t help but think that the folks over at MAX got a little confused over Dauberman previous King experience. Yes, he wrote the screenplay but let’s not forget that Stephen King wrote the original novel. Dauberman adapted it into a screen play, with a few changes of script and scenes. What Dauberman has done with the script of Salem’s Lot, is damn near a crime. Dropping him into the director seat was always going to be a BAD idea. More on this in a bit.

Now, I don’t know about the politics of this film, only the producers and director know for sure, but what I do know is that the film did not make it’s original release date. And after seeing the film, it’s easy to see why the people behind Warner Bros.and HBO Max struggled to decide what to do with new adaption. It was during this tumultuous time that Warner was pruning movies from its future streaming line up, cancelling films such as Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, both of which were filmed but in post-production. So, when the Lot disappeared from the 2022 theatrical line up, people started to talk, wondering if the film would also get cut. In fact, it could be said that the film was only released due to pressure from King himself, who was very vocal on the films lack of release two years later. I can only imagine that contracts with King would have prevented a complete cull, or maybe peer pressure was enough? Either way, King spoke out and the film was released, warts and all.

So, how do I even start on breaking down this film? Let us start by chatting about screen play. For what ever reason, and this completely stumps me on this decision, Dauberman decided to completely re-write the story. There are a few heart beats in the film, even the odd line, that are from the pure form of King’s novel. 99% is from the narrow imagination of Dauberman. Stephen King has sold over 400 million copies of his 65 published books. He is undoubtedly one of the most read and successful authors of all time. It takes a brave, if not naive, person to say, “I think I can write that better”! It’s quite frankly disrespectful of the original book.

But here is the killer move, the new screen play brings in additional things that never existed in the original novel. I understand removing things in order to tell the story, but adding in additional scenes seems like madness. In fact, the films major focus is a drive-in movie theatre, replacing the Masten house as the films most important location. It’s mentioned quite loudly in the films opening credits, as a newspaper announces, “Drive-In Opens for the season”, a red flag for fans scratching their heads wondering if they might have slipped into the wrong movie screen. And yet, the damn movie theate keeps rearing it’s ugly head, leading to a showdown against the entire town, all who have decided that the Drive-in is the perfect place for vampires to hide during day light hours. Barlow’s master plan was to hide in the back of a van, at the movie theatre.
The screen play is juts an awful mess, with huge amounts of exposition, awfull dialogue, a terrible choppy pace and damp squib of an ending. This is not Stephen King’s novel, this is Dauberman’s wet fart of an adaptation.

It’s hard to polish a turd, so turning the script into a film was never going to be easy, and yet, almost every decision on the film level was a bad one. The cast, led by Lewis Pullman’s wet behind the ears Ben Mears, is a pretty awful mix of bad actors. My very first reaction was that Pullman was way to young tom play Mears, my second reaction is that Ben did damn near nothing through out the film. Literally nothing. In Kings Novel, Mears is a seasoned, if not haunted, writer. The death of his wife, and the haunted memories the Marsten House, draw him back to his child-hood town, in order to write about the ominous building that looks down upon the town. In the new film, he’s a writer, but no one knows who he is, and he doesn’t do any writing, or anything.

Makenzie Leigh’s Susan Norton is also another character that has very little to do here. Hilariously, leading up to the 2022 release date, she had mentioned that they new film had adapted Susan to be a more stronger character that had a lot more to do. If by “ a lot more to do” she meant “in a lot more scenes” then yes, she is correct. For some reason, they chuck Susan into about every damn scene they could think of, and yet she does NOTHING. In fact, that is my feeling on most of the characters here. Father Callahan, Straker, Gillespie, all completely underused and badly acted.
The main cast, and the people that contribute towards the film are Bill Camp’s Matt Burke and Jordan Preston Carter’s Mark Petrie, but even they are just a bit dodgy on the old acting boards. Camp’s character is just not very expressive and considering the shocking nature of his encounter with Mike Ryerson, his performance is just not inline with someone who has had a near death experience with a vampire. Camp’s Burke is a little flat tonally. Carter’s Petrie is near the best performance, but the script, the set up and his supporting cast lend him a rope that he can only hang himself with, rather than help him out of a hole.

Despite the bad cast, the films biggest issue is the LACK of the wider Salem’s lot townsfolk, who have been either relegated to a name drop, or omitted entirely. This mistake has left Salem’s Lot feeling like a half-painted picture, rather than a living breathing town.
Moving on from the cast, let’s talk editing. The films pacing is jarring at best, with huge jumps in time, sometimes with a little bit of text that says “one week later” but mostly without, leaving your brain scrabbling to figure out where exactly we are timewise. Due to this, the slow degradation of Jerusalem’s Lot feels less personal. In fact, the film goes from (kinda) bustling town to empty streets in a heartbeat. But as we barley knew the town, or the folks that roamed it’s paved streets, no real loss there. The film feels like it’s been heavily cut from a wider reel, but done so at a very amateurish level. There’s simply no polish. And the colour grade looks awful. Everything is washed out and over saturated. It feels like a film that spent a day in grade, rather than weeks.

The entire film feels like Dauberman stumbled over every decision, even his depiction of Barlow is a terrible ugly looking blobby CGI bastard version of Reggie Nalder 1979 infamous head vampire. There are hints of a better film, maybe even a more artistically skilled direction, speckled throughout. The bar scene where Jason Burke meets up with a sickly Mike Ryerson is genuinely creepier than the scene deserved. But even this is ruined by direction that told Spencer Treat Clark to gurn stupidly down the camera like a dog chewing on a toffee. Salem’s lot is a terrible film, possible the worst film I’ve seen this year (and I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff). This is not Stephen King’s story, nor his characters. This is amateur directors’ vision of grandeur. When handed an adaption of King, use his words to form your visions. Salem’s Lot (2024) is about one of the worst adaptions I’ve ever seen, with a terrible cast that is badly shot and genuinely just looks awful. I’ve already put way too much effort into reviewing this film, so I’ll leave it with these final thoughts. You can’t re-write King.

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