The 1970s saw horror up sticks from its traditional setting of crumbling Gothic European mansions and move into a shiny new home in the suburbs and small towns of the US. Films like Halloween, The Fog, The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist brought the supernatural to a setting most viewers, especially Americans, could easily relate to. On the page, Stephen King was doing similar. In his 1975 novel Salem's Lot, a vampire literally relocates to small town New England. While King had several bestsellers and a Brian de Palma adaptation of his debut novel Carrie by that point, it was director Tobe Hooper's 1979 Salem's Lot TV mini-series that really made King a household name, and crucially, it introduced the writer's work to a new fanbase too young to have been able to see Carrie in cinemas. With one of its two central heroes being a monster movie obsessed young boy, it also set the template for '80s movies like The Goonies and The Monster Squad, which of course would later be channelled by Netflix's flagship series Stranger Things.
You would think the success of that show would make Salem's Lot ripe for a streaming series adaptation, but Warner Bros. have made the daft decision to compress King's hefty tome into a single film, despite having spread King's It over two movies. Gary Dauberman, the writer/director of this new adaptation, has claimed his movie was originally three hours in length, but the version now released runs less than two hours. The result is a narrative mess that not only excises some minor subplots but also cuts out so much important stuff that it's practically missing its entire middle act.
The general plot remains intact. Mildly successful author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) returns to his childhood hometown of Jerusalem's Lot with the intent of researching a book inspired by the Marsten House, an American Gothic house that sits ominously atop a hill looking down at the town below (One of the the elements left on the cutting room floor here is the exact detail of why Ben is interested in this particular house). The Marsten House is now home to Barlow (Alexander Ward), a vampire who has relocated from Europe with his human familiar Straker (Pilou Asbæk), ostensibly to open an antiques store.
The slow burn build-up of King's novel and Hooper's mini-series (and even the mediocre 2004 mini-series) is a victim of the chopping block here as Dauberman's film rushes to get to the point where Ben assembles a ragtag team of vampire hunters featuring his doting new girlfriend Susan (Makenzie Leigh), the aforementioned young monster movie buff Mark (Jordan Preston Carter), alcoholic priest Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey), teacher Matthew (Bill Camp) and doctor Cody (Alfre Woodard). With so much of the character establishment missing, we're left scratching our heads as to how this group comes together. The coy flirtation of Ben and Susan is so rushed here that it's reminiscent of those '80s horror movies where young women would inexplicably jump into bed with older men (usually Tom Atkins) within minutes of meeting them. When Mark's best friend shows up in vampire form (a scene that pales in comparison to Hooper's equivalent, which traumatised a generation of young viewers) he immediately states "I guess I better go kill Barlow," which makes no sense here as the movie hasn't given us any evidence that Mark is even aware of Barlow's existence at that point.
King's novel and Hooper's mini-series both devoted much time to making Jerusalem's Lot feel like a real place by injecting soap opera-esque subplots and fleshing out a host of supporting characters (King famously pitched his book as "Dracula meets Peyton Place"), but none of this is present in Dauberman's film. We never get a sense of Jersualem's Lot as a location, or of the community that resides therein. In the final act, when most of the townsfolk have fled, there's no eeriness to the empty streets as we never got to know any of its residents in the first place.
For all its many flaws, there is some fun to be had here. As a Salem's Lot adaptation it's a stinker, but as a throwback to '70s and '80s horror, it provides some entertainment for genre fans who will recognise its nods to the likes of John Carpenter's The Fog, Gary Sherman's Dead & Buried and Lucio Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy. Ironically, its best moments are new additions that deviate wildly from the source material. There's a great moment where Dauberman mimics the classic Scooby Doo shot of a villainous figure walking behind their would-be victim, but it's genuinely unsettling in this context. Taking his cues from Romero's zombies congregating around their old haunt of a shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead, Dauberman has his vampiric townsfolk flock to the town's drive-in movie theatre, turning the trunks of their cars into makeshift coffins. It's the sort of blending of Americana and Gothic horror that King himself would appreciate. Dauberman constructs a brand new climax that is genuinely one of the most inventive set-pieces I've seen in a mainstream American horror movie in some time. It's such an imaginative sequence that I couldn't help but wonder if Dauberman began with an idea for an original vampire movie only to have his arm twisted into remaking Salem's Lot instead.
Directed by: Gary Dauberman
Starring: Lewis Pullman, Pilou Asbaek, Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard, Bill Camp, John Benjamin Hickey, Nicholas Crovetti, Jordan Preston Carter, William Sadler
