Stephen King horror classic ‘Salem’s Lot’ hurries through a nostalgic retelling
By Scott McDaniel, TheStatehouseFile.com
“Salem’s Lot” is back again, and while it feels like a speed reading of the classic horror story, it’s a solid reminder of how Stephen King became a household name so long ago.
In the story, a writer named Ben Mears returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot—Salem’s Lot, for short. Not great timing on his part because his arrival coincides with a vampire known as Barlow showing up and turning a bunch of the town’s residents into fanged minions, leaving Ben and a few remaining brave souls to try and stop the evil from spreading.
When Stephen King published “Salem’s Lot” in 1975, it was only his second published novel, yet it remains one of the author’s personal favorites that he has created.
Nearly 50 years have passed, with multiple versions on film, but the 2024 release is exclusively streaming on Max.
The acting is inconsistent and stale at times, but that may be because the script is severely rushed. It’s tough to condense a beloved novel with so many characters into a 113 minute film. It speeds along, with little depth, to the key moments—characters believing too easily and somehow knowing too much—like after a kid named Mark is visited (in the scene that gave me nightmares from the original film) by his buddy Ralphie, a recently turned vampire who is floating outside his bedroom window at night, calling to him with glowing eyes. From that experience, Mark knows exactly what’s up, who the boss vampire is, and where the monster is sleeping. Wait, what?
Nonetheless, the film’s source material elevates the entertainment value higher than it otherwise should. It helps that it’s very well shot, like the scene where Ralphie gets kidnapped, the camera sweeping through the trees as the brothers walk in a row, only to reveal a silhouetted man standing directly behind Ralphie. The suddenness of the shot gave me chills.
The classic vampire scares are still as effective as they were in my youth. I’ve seen enough vampire movies over the years to know the formula, and this is clearly not a new story, so I was surprised when I found myself feeling hopeless for the heroes in their dire situation. Subconsciously, that might be the King effect; his stories are generally less predictable, we meet a plethora of characters, and by the time we think we know who will survive, they die.
When the final stake is driven, it feels a bit anticlimactic, but that sums up this retelling of “Salem’s Lot”—a limited adaptation that still manages to pay nostalgic homage to a haunting classic.
3.5/5
Scott McDaniel is an assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College. He lives in Bargersville with his wife and three kids.
