Streamin’ King: A New ‘Salem’s Lot’ Feature Film Takes A Crack At Improving Upon The 1979 Miniseries Misfire

Streamin’ King is grave-digging through the myriad Stephen King adaptations available on streaming. This time we’re watching Max’s brand new Salem’s Lot, the first-ever feature film adaptation of the 1975 novel. 

STREAMIN’ KING: SALEM’S LOT (2024)

THE GIST: In a film finally seeing daylight after shooting four years ago, it’s the mid-’70s and Jerusalem’s Lot is being methodically vampirized by an ancient European lord of the night and his fancy-lad familiar. The only thing standing between the vamps and the soul of this small Maine town is author Ben Mears and his scrappy ka-tet comprised of a priest, teacher, doctor, schoolboy/horror enthusiast, and Ben’s new girlfriend Susan. 

PEDIGREE: Written and directed by Gary Dauberman, one of the screenwriters behind 2017’s It, went solo on the sequel. Salem’s Lot is his sophomore directorial outing after 2019’s Annabelle Comes Home, one of four Conjuring universe movies he penned. Stars Lewis Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick), Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones’ Euron Greyjoy), Oscar nominee Alfre Woodard (The Book of Clarence), Emmy nominees Bill Camp (The Queen’s Gambit) and John Benjamin Hickey (The Big C), plus Makenzie Leigh (The Assistant), Jordan Preston Carter (The Haves and the Have Nots), and William Sadler, who was in all three of Frank Darabont’s Stephen King projects—The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist. Cinematography by Michael Burgess (Malignant), music by Nathan Barr (True Blood) and Lisbeth Scott (The Expanse). Produced by writer/director James Wan (Aquaman, Saw). King isn’t always credited as a producer on adaptations of his work, but he is indeed an EP here.

WORTH WATCHING FOR CONSTANT READERS? Cautiously, with heavily managed expectations, maybe just to analyze how Dauberman smushes so many of the book’s beats in here but extracts very little of its charm or terror. This is the first AAA King title to become a movie since 2019’s It Chapter Two, and the result is dismaying. If you’re an acolyte of the 1979 miniseries and want to see how they brought the material to life this time, sure, check it out, it’s less than two hours. Jordan Preston Carter does well as Mark Petrie, and it’s impossible not to love Bill Camp. But there’s a lot to be disappointed by, so many things that feel not quite right, or very not-right. The Danny Glick window encounter simply cannot be this bad in 2024.

The Marsten House’s history and Ben’s traumatic childhood experience inside is a lot to stuff into a film, but still, don’t allude to it and then abandon it. The intermittent Maine accents are disorienting, but Alfre Woodard comes close. The creepily designed, overly CGI’d Barlow has about three lines of dialogue, so it’s nice to hear the famous “sad to see a man’s faith fail” as one of them, allowing the pivotal scene in Mark’s kitchen to rise to the source material. There are a lot of feelings rolled up into something like the first-ever ’Salem’s Lot movie. The Constant Reader in me was stressed and agitated for most of the first watch, a little more forgiving on a rewatch; I’m intrigued to see what lands for fans. Dauberman & Co. needed more resources, more creativity and consideration, and definitely less studio meddling to improve this stifling, drab, tedious, loopy product. Now we have to wait ages for another attempt, which stings.

WORTH WATCHING FOR KING NEWBIES/AGNOSTICS? Unless you’re trying to be a rock for your Constant Reader partner or friend who has to see it, probably not. Perhaps if you’re a Gary Dauberman superfan, a Daubhead, Annabelle hive? It’s impossible to understand why these first 10 minutes were chosen to kick things off, why it’s such a misguided inversion of the “show, don’t tell” method, or why the whole “how do we beat ’em?” montage is a kid muttering to himself alone while writing in a notebook. You do get to glimpse the cool vampire design mere minutes in, but then the first true encounter with Barlow is a POV/found footage-style debacle. The drive-in theater climax has a couple quality moments, but it must be said that sunsets just don’t work like that. Fun deus ex Mark-ina, though. And way too many glowing crosses blasting vampires across rooms like faith-based Street Fighter hadoukens.

I sadly don’t know if there’s a single thing to truly love here. A couple subversive/mildly inventive moments caught me off guard, like a funeral cutting to the gravedigger blithely eating his sandwich far away, then staying with him as the proceedings go on silently in the background.

There are better vampire movies out there for you (many of which Robert Eggers is about to humble with Nosferatu), better Stephen King stuff, better small town horror stories. Turn to Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, which is four times longer, 10 times better, and structured like, and happily indebted to, ‘Salem’s Lot.

7 STEPHEN KING TIES, REFERENCES, AND MISCELLANY:

1. This project spent eons in development hell, shooting in 2021, securing a September 2022 release date before getting bumped to April 2023, followed by a prolonged radio silence. Last November, King tweeted, “The Warner Bros remake of SALEM’S LOT, currently shelved, is muscular and involving. It has the feel of ‘Old Hollywood,’ when a film was given a chance to draw a breath before getting to business. When attention spans were longer, in other words.” In February, he added, “Between you and me, Twitter, I’ve seen the new SALEM’S LOT and it’s quite good. Old-school horror filmmaking: slow build, big payoff. Not sure why WB is holding it back; not like it’s embarrassing, or anything. Who knows. I just write the fucking things.”

The Warner Bros remake of SALEM'S LOT, currently shelved, is muscular and involving. It has the feel of "Old Hollywood," when a film was given a chance to draw a breath before getting to business. When attention spans were longer, in other words.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) November 1, 2023

Between you and me, Twitter, I've seen the new SALEM'S LOT and it's quite good. Old-school horror filmmaking: slow build, big payoff. Not sure why WB is holding it back; not like it's embarrassing, or anything. Who knows. I just write the fucking things.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) February 19, 2024

2. Returning visitors to the Kingverse include Bill Camp (The Outsider) and William Sadler, who, in addition to Frank Darabont’s films, led the audio adaptation The Mist in 3D Sound. (One could argue that Sadler’s pretty lackluster in Salem’s; past King cops Scott Glenn or Michael Rooker would’ve been an improvement.) The actresses playing Marjorie Glick (Danielle Perry) and Mabel Wertz (Rebecca Gibel) each did an episode of Castle Rock. Producer Roy Lee also worked on the It movies, Doctor Sleep, and the 2020-21 The Stand miniseries.

3. When we last touched on ’Salem’s Lot here at Streamin’ King, the Adrien Brody-starring Epix series Chapelwaite was still new to the world. Based on the prequel story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” the 2021 show got a quick renewal but was scrapped in late 2023. King said it was an “excellent, creepy expansion of my story.”

4. In 1979, ’Salem’s Lot became the first King book to make it to TV, showing up between the all-time cinematic greats Carrie in ’76 and The Shining in 1980. Tobe Hooper’s director’s commentary on the Blu-ray claimed Salem’s was “the most expensive miniseries made” at that point. It was adapted as a TNT miniseries in 2004 with Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland, Andre Braugher, and James Cromwell—but the BBC’s three-hour radio drama in 1994 may have outdone both.

5. The fact that Father Donald Callahan shows up in The Dark Tower seems to be fairly common knowledge, but if you’re planning to deprive yourself of the game-changing series and still want to know what role he plays, here we go: Don takes the bus out of ’Salem’s Lot after his faith fails against Barlow, only to find himself on Greyhounds sliding in and out of different Americas in parallel worlds. He happens to learn much more about identifying and hunting different classes of vampires, then ends up in a fantastical small town called Calla Bryn Sturgis in Mid-World, where folks have taken to calling this spiritual leader Pere and the Old Fella. By the time Book V: Wolves of the Calla really gets rolling, Callahan becomes an honorary member of the ka-tet alongside Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy. If preeminent King adapter Mike Flanagan does make his way that deep into an adaptation, hopefully Callahan’s part in this Salem’s Lot movie doesn’t jeopardize his availability as a character.

6. There’s a prominent copy of Watership Down by Danny’s bed. King put this on a list of his top 10 favorite books not too long ago.

7. The Kingcast co-host Scott Wampler sadly passed earlier this year, and we’re lucky he left so much great work to go back to. He and Eric Vespe did strong, funny, insightful, ’Salem’s Lot episodes with Bryan Fuller in 2020, Barbara Crampton in 2021, and Noah Segan in 2022, plus one with Richard Newby on A Return to Salem’s Lot last year.

CRITICAL CONSENSUS: There’s a surprising amount of goodwill out there, and a necessary contingent of critiques. The Wrap says Salem’s Lot “raises the bar” and “may be the only Stephen King remake that gets it right, while IGN deems it “one of the most aggravating Stephen King adaptations in recent memory,” noting how it “sands the sinister Barlow down into a near-mute super vampire monster with CG eyes.” Bloody Disgusting is disappointed with “an empty retelling that thoroughly guts Stephen King’s story, including connective tissue, leaving nothing behind but a string of showy vampire horror scenes.” Slashfilm thinks the town “feels practically deserted before the vampires even show up” but the movie “finds some life in its climax, gleefully unleashing monster mayhem that feels ported over from a much more enjoyable B-movie.” The Hollywood Reporter found that “in its eagerness to get to the monster material, the film abandons the enduring themes of King’s novel,” conceding that “when it’s content working on a more intimate level, it has some real strength.”

Screenrant calls the script “inconsistently effective, balanced out by an often strong sense for horror image-making that should leave fans of vampire tales with enough to feel satisfied,” with Bill Camp’s scenes representing “the best version of what Dauberman’s film could have been.” A Nerdist review glows brighter than those magical crosses, saying Salem’s “feels primed to gain a fresh following that could make it a beloved seasonal fave,” thanks to the way it “brings the intensity, gore, and scares that one desires in a vampire story and uses the skeleton of Stephen King’s source novel to craft new elements.” The same review astutely highlights “the concept of outsiders being both the detriment and the saviors of a small town’s status quo.” The A.V. Club makes the excellent and damning point that “from the streaming-centric opening credits—with rivulets of blood trickling across expository documents and a map of Maine, evoking Game of Thrones, Shogun, and Rings of Power—Salem’s Lot feels optimized, streamlined, and totally defanged.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT FOR SALEM’S LOT (1975): King’s sophomore outing is about to become his second book to turn 50, following this year’s celebrations of Carrie. After those two dropped in ’74 and ’75, his next novels were The Shining in January ’77, Rage (as Richard Bachman) in September ’77, and The Stand in October ’78. ’Salem’s received a sorta-prequel in the 1978 Night Shift short story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” and one of its characters returned for the final three Dark Tower novels in 2003 and ’04.

Zach Dionne writes and records Stephen King things on his Patreon, SKzd.