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'Salem's Lot

It's officially October, which means that it is my favorite time of the year: spooky season. And one of our first new horror movie offerings this month is actually a Stephen King adaptation.

'Salem's Lot is written and directed by Gary Dauberman, the same man who wrote both of the recent It adaptations, and that was a very promising sign for me. After all, he did a great job with It. But then I learned that the movie was finished in 2022 and has been languishing since, and that was not a promising sign at all. It wasn't until Stephen King himself tweeted about it and his confusion over its lack of release that it was finally put on Max.

Let's get this out of the way first: it's a good movie. It's not great, but it's very solid with some very effective horror sequences and moments. Despite being almost two hours long, it flew by. I'm just not sure how good of an adaptation it is, and I think your memories or feelings towards previous adaptations of the story might color your perception here.

The 1979 adaption has some very iconic scenes to which this version simply can't measure up. That might be an unfair comparison to make in the first place, but it still lingered in the back of my mind. I enjoyed the movie a lot more when I could ignore that and just take it as its own thing. The cinematography and dynamics between characters drew me in, even as I kind of had to smile at the stereotypical King characters that would pop up.

There's the obvious King stand-in of Ben, an author that gets middling reviews, and Mark, the precocious preteen. You know exactly what you're getting with them, and with all of the characters for that matter. No one has any hidden depths, but the acting was strong enough that they still managed to feel like real people.

'Salem's Lot runs into the same problem that a lot of book adaptations run into: they're squeezing a 439-672 page novel (depending on the edition you're using) into a two hour movie. There just isn't enough time, especially once the action really starts to pick up.

The initial jump to "It's Vampires!" was basically instantaneous and without a ton of proof from the first person who said it. It'd be one thing if he saw fangs and crawling out of a grave, but he didn't. He just made the leap of logic that happened to be correct. And this isn't a horrible thing on its surface. It would be annoying if the reveal was dragged out for too long. But there's a happy medium there and the movie missed, and it was a sign for things to come.

In general, events happen but the characters aren't allowed to emotionally react to them. Even when characters die or are hurt, there's no real impact. We're just whisked along to the next thing. And that's a shame. I had gotten attached to our characters. I cared about their fates and what happened to them. But it felt like the movie itself didn't, like it was just another thing to check off before rushing forward to the next checkbox.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that they did a great job of taking their time and building the tension during the first act. The Lot felt like a fully realized, busy small town, and it was gorgeous to look at in the fall foliage. Honestly, the entire movie is gorgeous. There are a few match cuts that are a little cheesy, but the use of color and light was fabulous. Even when the plot moved at a breakneck pace, it still managed to be beautiful.

The monster effects were also very good. I had no complaints there other than the fact that I wanted to see more of them and of Barrow's specifically. There is also some really subtle things that happen in the background of scenes that then set up future events. And I absolutely love it when movies do that, especially when they don't draw attention to it, like how the town gradually emptied out as time went on.

Honestly, this movie really needed to be split into two parts. That would have solved almost all of my issues with it. But it's still an excellent movie for the spooky season, and pretty good for a King adaptation.

Random Thoughts

The movie takes place in 1975, the same year the book was released.

While there is definitely some blood, a lot of the violence occurs off-screen for anyone who isn't a fan of it.

I just want to mention the use of light again. It was used to create so many striking shots, as it should in a vampire movie where sunlight is critically important.

Also loved the glowing crosses. That's just fun and cool and I had never seen that before.

I've seen the title written both with and without the apostrophe. Wikipedia uses it, so I'm following that.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for your review, Fangirl. This one is definitely on my list, but only because it's a King adaptation. Even though I'm often disappointed in King adaptations, I sort of have to watch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had no idea they were making a new version of this one. The 1979 one I saw as a kid on TV and it was pretty freaky when you're 9 years old! I felt James Mason was scarier than Barlow was for most of that one.

    ReplyDelete

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