It’s officially spooky season as people bring out their skeletons and pumpkins. And that makes this the perfect time of the year for a new Stephen King adaptation. “Salem’s Lot” has been adapted before into two mini-series, but now the vampire story has its own movie.
While the new film isn’t nearly as iconic as the ‘79 mini-series with Reggie Nalder, it still gives audiences a fun vampire scare-fest with equal parts camp and horror. The new movie dropping on Max today will join the ranks of perfectly fine and entertaining vampire flicks like “Fright Night” and “From Dusk Till Dawn.”
The story follows an author named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) as he returns to his childhood home in Maine to do research for a new book. He arrives at the same time a vampire does and gradually realizes everyone in town is being turned. Pullman is outshined by more charismatic performers like Bill Camp and Alfre Woodard, but he still manages to do a serviceable job as the story’s lead.
For most of “Salem’s Lot,” Pullman almost seems to have studied Jared Padalecki’s performance in “Supernatural,” mimicking several of his mannerisms in the process. But, seeing how many vampires Padalecki has killed on screen, the performance is right at home in this new movie.
Still, nobody chews quite as much scenery as Pilou Asbæk, who plays the familiar of this film’s vampire antagonist, Mr. Barlow (Alexander Ward). Asbæk is ridiculously charming and creepy in every scene he’s in. And Ward makes for a sufficiently scary vampire, even if an annoying number of jump scares aids him.
“Salem’s Lot” has a retro feel to it, like this movie would be at home if it’d been made decades ago. The original story is set in the 1970s, and Director Gary Dauberman was able to capture that look for this film’s small New England town of Jerusalem’s Lot. The only thing that would have made it better is if the production had actually been filmed in Maine like 1989’s “Pet Sematary.”
Unsurprisingly, because Dauberman co-wrote the scripts for “It” and “It Chapter Two,” fans of those King adaptations will see similar fingerprints in the craft of “Salem’s Lot.”
Audiences won’t have any time to be bored as this film’s pace rockets ahead like a movie that knows it has 600 pages of book to adapt in less than two hours. But that works to the story’s advantage here because the narrative remains rather simple.
Most people who sit down to watch a vampire flick have probably seen at least two or three others before. So, “Salem’s Lot” doesn’t have to waste any time explaining lore. Most folks know how vampires work. And it’s not too big of a leap for this story’s characters to speedily put two and two together.
One of the most telling signs of how long “Salem’s Lot” languished in production hell comes from actor Cameron Crovetti, who plays a kid in this film. Fans of “The Boys” will recognize Crovetti as Homelander’s son. And in the most recent season, he looks like a teenager. But since “Salem’s Lot” was shot a few years prior to release, Crovetti looks much younger.
Fortunately for “Salem’s Lot,” this film seems to have defied the odds and earned itself a release on Max when other projects like “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme” fell prey to CEO David Zaslav’s misguided movie cancellations.
And being a streaming release plays to the strengths of this film. The other “Salem’s Lot” adaptations were made for the TV screen, and this movie certainly looks, at times, like a made-for-TV movie. While that may sound like a slight, it’s actually a compliment to how much camp and borderline B-movie entertainment “Salem’s Lot” delivers.
It doesn’t come anywhere close to the masterful horror that is the original book, but “Salem’s Lot” is still an entertaining vampire romp that tells a simple story equipped with just enough scares and campy pulp to make for a fun time.
People wanting something new to watch that will get them in the Halloween spirit won’t be disappointed. Light the jack-o-lantern, lean back in the recliner, and watch Mainers fight vampires for a couple of hours.
