We’re wanted back at “the Lot”, a place where everybody is hiding secrets, where the neighbours keep disappearing and where thirsty, undead bloodsuckers rarely use the front door. Fun times.
Ask around and you’d be hard pressed to find a single viewer who didn’t come away from Tobe Hooper’s 1979 adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot with a terrible fear of bedroom windows. I hated mine, and Hooper’s acclaimed rendering of the King classic – designed as a TV mini-series for US audiences and as a major theatrical event for European territories – kept me up for weeks. You know why.
Gary Dauberman’s long-awaited do-over – which, like its famous predecessor, has been reserved for the small screen in the US but receives a cinema release in these parts – has some big shoes to fill. We trust everyone involved approached this rowdy, atmospheric chiller with good intentions.
Capable cast members deliver their lines enthusiastically and most of them wear their best frightened faces throughout. The music is good, the sun-drenched small-town aesthetic is nice to look at. Sadly, we are already running out of positive things to say about Salem’s Lot 2.0, a film that bears all the hallmarks of a project that’s been tampered with and shredded in post-production.
John Benjamin Hickey as stricken Father Callahan in ‘Salem’s Lot’. Photo: Justin Lubin
The central drama, at least, gets off to a reasonably competent start. A cagey European antiques dealer with dangerous eyes and a snazzy fashion sense, Richard Straker (an over-the-top Pilou Asbaek) is new to Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, and has arranged for a midnight delivery to his creepy mansion at the top of the hill (you know the one).
The driver, you’ll be glad to hear, is wise enough not to ask what’s in the trunk, but the rest of us are already two steps ahead: Kurt Barlow (Alexander Ward), the freaky Nosferatu-like demon of the tale, is en route to the Lot, and things are about to get weird.
Meanwhile, a popular young author named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) has returned to the place he used to call home.
Ben was raised in the Lot but moved away some 20 years ago following a tragic family accident. Why is he back? Research for a new book, presumably, but it’ll need to wait, for there are various distractions up ahead.
One, a budding romance with a local named Susan (Makenzie Leigh), will help ease his troubled soul. Another, a missing persons case that almost certainly involves a ghastly ancient vampire, will complicate matters further.
Eventually, a nervous schoolteacher (Bill Camp’s Mr Burke) and a precocious pre-teen (Jordan Preston Carter’s Mark) figure out why there’s been so many strange occurrences since Mr Straker arrived in town. Time to load up on stakes and holy water.
Makenzie Leigh in ‘Salem’s Lot’. Photo: Justin Lubin
A familiar Stephen King set-up there, and it’s a good one. The follow-through, however, is all over the place. To be fair, Dauberman, who worked on the lucrative It franchise, has assembled a first-rate squad out in front.
The great Alfre Woodard looks to be having a blast as a sceptical medical professional with an answer for everything. The always reliable William Sadler, a King film regular, shows up as a worrisome police officer, and John Benjamin Hickey portrays Father Callahan, an anxious, alcoholic priest. A lovely line-up – they deserve a better film.
Shot in 2021 and originally pencilled for a 2022 release, the new Salem’s Lot looks and sounds as if it’s being edited while we watch. Large chunks appear to be missing from the story.
It’s all a little jumbled, a little shapeless, and what happens in one scene doesn’t always sync with the events that occur in the next. This is hardly a surprise: Dauberman claims his original cut was almost three hours long.
The one we got clocks in at 113 minutes and includes a cartoonish title sequence that, among other things, fills in the back story. Make of that what you will.
Running time issues aside, what drags this watery, unimaginative remake into the dirt is a reckless disregard for tremendous source material. Forget all the fizzy small-town drama of the original; never mind the moody 1970s backdrop, or the tormented author with a murky past.
James Wan, creator of The Conjuring universe, is a producer here, and the only thing his films are interested in is mindless jump scares. This new and unimproved Salem’s Lot is full of them. A monumental disappointment.
Two stars