Salem's Lot

There is a specific kind of cinematic purgatory reserved for big-budget horror movies that studios simply don’t know how to sell. For three years, Gary Dauberman’s adaptation of Salem’s Lot sat on a shelf at Warner Bros., gathering digital dust while rumors swirled that it might be deleted for a tax write-off. When it finally slunk onto Max (formerly HBO Max) in late 2024, it arrived with the weary energy of a guest who showed up to the party three hours late because they couldn't find their keys.

I watched this while my cat, Barnaby, stared intently at a corner of the ceiling where absolutely nothing was happening, and honestly, his unblinking gaze provided a more effective jump scare than the film’s first twenty minutes. But once the sun goes down in Jerusalem’s Lot, Dauberman—who wrote the recent It films and directed Annabelle Comes Home—reminds us why we keep coming back to Stephen King’s Maine. This isn't a revolutionary reinvention of the vampire myth; it’s a handsomely mounted, slightly rushed, and surprisingly colorful ode to the era of the drive-in.

A Town Dying to Meet You

The story remains the same cozy nightmare King dreamt up in '75. Lewis Pullman (son of Bill Pullman, and carrying that same "trustworthy neighbor" charisma) plays Ben Mears, an author returning to his childhood home to write a book about the ominous Marsten House. He quickly strikes up a romance with Susan Norton, played with a sharp, modern sensibility by Makenzie Leigh, but their flirtation is interrupted by the arrival of a large, mysterious crate.

What follows is the slow-motion collapse of a small town. People start disappearing, kids start floating outside bedroom windows, and the local doctor, played by the always-reliable Alfre Woodard, realizes that the "flu" going around involves a distinct lack of pulse and a sudden aversion to crucifixes.

Released in an era of "elevated horror" where every monster is a metaphor for grief or generational trauma, there is something deeply refreshing about a movie that just wants to be a movie about vampires. The pacing moves like a vampire who just realized the sun is coming up in five minutes, sprinting through the middle act so fast that we barely get to know the townspeople before they start sharpening their fangs. It lacks the slow-burn dread of Tobe Hooper’s 1979 miniseries, but it replaces it with a vibrant, comic-book aesthetic that feels right at home in 2024’s visual landscape.

Practical Shadows and Digital Dust

One thing I genuinely appreciated was the look of the thing. Cinematographer Michael Burgess, who worked with Dauberman on the Conjuring universe, uses a color palette of deep ochre and twilight blues that makes the 1970s setting feel lived-in rather than a costume party. The decision to keep it a period piece was the right call; vampires are significantly less scary when you can just Google "why is my neighbor glowing" or livestream a burial.

As for the master vampire, Kurt Barlow, the film takes its cues from the 1922 Nosferatu by way of the '79 adaptation. He’s a silent, screeching creature rather than a suave aristocrat. To be honest, Barlow looks less like an ancient evil and more like a very angry, blue-tinted bowling ball, but the practical makeup effects are top-notch. There’s a scene in a drive-in theater that serves as the film's centerpiece, utilizing the long shadows of the parked cars to create a genuinely tense sequence of cat-and-mouse.

The Mystery of the Missing Hour

The biggest hurdle for this Salem’s Lot isn't the CGI or the acting—it’s the editing. You can practically feel the fingerprints of the studio executives who insisted on trimming this down to under two hours. Characters like Matt Burke (Bill Camp) and Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey) are played by world-class actors who feel like they’re competing for screen time in a race they weren't told they were running.

Apparently, Stephen King himself was one of the loudest voices advocating for the film’s release, tweeting several times about how the movie was "unnecessarily shelved" and "quite good." It’s easy to see why he liked it. It captures the "group of misfits vs. the world" vibe that defines his best work. Jordan Preston Carter steals the show as Mark Petrie, the monster-movie-obsessed kid who is the only person in town with a lick of common sense.

The trivia surrounding the production is almost as interesting as the film itself. The Marsten House was actually a full-scale exterior built in Princeton, Massachusetts, and the town was meticulously dressed to look like 1975, only for the footage to sit in a vault while the industry shifted beneath it. It’s a miracle it feels as cohesive as it does.

This version of Salem's Lot is a solid, B-tier horror flick that suffered from being caught in the gears of a corporate merger. It doesn't have the haunting staying power of the original miniseries, but it’s a fun, spooky ride that respects the source material. If you’re looking for a breezy Friday night watch that delivers some classic "stakes and crosses" action without demanding a philosophy degree to understand the ending, you could do a lot worse than this long-lost trip to the Lot. Just remember to close your drapes.