Salem’s Lot Failed To Suck Me In

Marking October 3 on my calendar, I gleefully tuned in on opening night to transport myself inside my favorite King novel and reconvene with the good people of the Lot. Unfortunately, by the time the credits rolled on Salem’s Lot, I found myself feeling a little ripped off by the Gary Dauberman-written and directed film. 

First and foremost, my biggest gripe about Salem’s Lot is the lack of character-building. The book takes time to build the story and the reader finds themselves pulled into the tale of Ben Mears’ return to the place where he spent time as a child and was traumatized by events that took place at the Marsden House. The remake was completely lacking in that piece of Ben’s (Lewis Pullman) background, giving the character an entirely different origin story and reason for coming back to the fictional Maine town.

But, even more than Ben, the two characters in Salem’s Lot that the movie let down the most were Bill Camp’s teacher, Matthew Burke, and John Benjamin Hickey’s Father Callahan. In the book, it’s a slow build before Matthew Burke reaches out to Ben in hopes that he’ll believe his seemingly impossible claim that vampires are walking among them.

But, in the movie, the two have hardly spent any time together before Matthew Burke approaches Ben for his help. The lack of connection makes the relationship between Matthew and Ben completely unbelievable and does damage to the storyline. 

As for Hickey’s Father Callahan, the book introduces the character as an old drunk who has long been questioning his faith. Salem’s Lot is just as much of a tale about vampires as it is about faith and how people put their beliefs into different things. This is an incredibly important piece of Father Callahan’s background as, moments before he’s killed by Barlow, he has a crisis of faith that ultimately brings about his demise.

In the book, readers have been working up to this point, getting to know Father Callahan through his thoughts and gaining an understanding of the man he is now, the man he was, and the man he hopes to become. So, by the time we get to the showdown between the man of the cloth and the centuries-old bloodsucker, it’s a heartbreaking moment. After being turned, the Father boards a bus and leaves Salem’s Lot in hopes of finding peace elsewhere while, in the new movie, the last we see of him is dead on the kitchen floor of the Petrie house.

Storyline aside, there were some rather good jump scares throughout Salem’s Lot and some great camera shots. The vampires were on par with King’s novel and the flying scenes were thrilling. But, I’ll never forgive the movie for leaving out one of the craziest kills that I’ve ever read, when Doctor Cody falls through an open door onto a set of knives below.

REVIEW SCORE

To be fair, even from the opening scene, I was already let down and should have known then how things would pan out. In the book’s prologue, readers first meet Ben and Mark Petrie in Mexico, where they’ve fled from the horrors that unfolded behind them in Salem’s Lot. The movie dove right into the primary story which was a good indicator that we would end up with the semi-happily-ever-after Hollywood ending with Ben and Mark driving off into the distance, certain that they had killed all the town’s bloodsuckers for good.

All in all, Max’s Salem’s Lot is the CliffsNotes version of the story, good for someone who maybe has never read the book or seen any of its other on-screen adaptations, and a win for those who need a happy ending.

You can now stream Salem’s Lot on Max.