FILM OF THE WEEK: Salem's Lot - by Roe McDermott

Vampire stories never really seem to go out of style, whether they’re being hunted by teenage girls, sparkling at teenage girls, having beautiful and dysfunctional love stories in New Orleans, or beautiful and derelict love stories in Detroit. But one of my favourite vampire tales of the past decade was Mike Flanagan’s 2021 miniseries Midnight Mass, an exploration of a tiny, devout and impoverished island community off the coast of Maine.

When a supernatural being appears on the island, the townspeople have very different reactions depending on their faith and their personal need – for a saviour, for forgiveness, for absolution, for meaning, for hope, for power. The creature that is in some people’s perception a vampire, others an angel, becomes not just a source of horror, but an insight into both the characters and philosophical questions about faith, goodness, and death – but we care about the questions because we care about the characters.

In this new adaptation of Salem’s Lot, instead of starting as Stephen King’s novel and Tobe Hooper’s 1979 film do, by introducing the townspeople and making the reader/viewer care about these people and their community bonds, before unleashing a fanged beast upon them, director Gary Dauberman dives into vampire business first. He shows the Victorian Marsten House, a grand mansion where a mysterious crate oozing a nefarious energy is delivered. Something supernatural is afoot, the film tells us – before we know why we should care.

The film then moves to 1975, where writer Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, son of Bill) has returned to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot. His parents died when he was young and he left the town, but he has returned looking for inspiration and some answers about himself. He wants to rent Marsten House, now a crumbling creeepfest looming over the town.

Ben’s arrival ruffles a few feathers in town, where the locals seem world-weary and suspicious to outsiders. He connects with Susan (Makenzie Leigh), much to the chagrin of her mother and ex-boyfriend Floyd (Kellan Rhude.) But when a young boy in the town goes missing, Ben also becomes a suspect – but the real monstrous force in the town is soon revealed.

King fans will both know that the novel is long with several subplots, and notice the film’s composite characters and narrative cuts, which were obviously necessary for timing, but undercut the film’s emotional resonance by diluting the depth of the characters and the connective tissue tying them together. The original cut of the film was three hours long, and the clumsy edits show in underdeveloped characters and awkward pacing. It’s a surprise, as Dauberman co-wrote the 2017 adaptation of It and wrote the sequel It Chapter Two, which proved that he can deftly handle stories about multiple characters navigating trauma, community and the supernatural.

Perhaps the success of It and its sequel lay in how emotionally tied the horror was to the characters, while in Salem’s Lot, the vampire remains quite traditionally, even quaintly religious in nature, and while the entire town is soon impacted by the spread of vampirism, the meaning and resonance of what the vampires signify lacks some bite. It's a shame, given the paranoia of the era, and the potential for some post-Covid examination about how a rapidly spreading infection affects a small town, and a post-Trump exploration of once-connected communities disintegrating.

When Ben and Susan are joined by a local doctor Cody (Alfre Woodard), teacher (Bill Camp), and preacher (John Benjamin Hickey) to go vampire hunting, the performances shine through, with Bill Camp in particular always elevating any project he’s in. Pullman has a certain modest charm, but he and to a greater extent Makenzie Leigh, are underserved by the film’s cuts, which loses their characterisation amidst too many threads and an uneven rhythm.

There are scenes where Dauberman slows down and lets us linger in the growing sense of dread – a scene in a dark bar, where a local slowly realises that there’s something very wrong with the young man he’s speaking to is wonderfully unnerving, and a climax at a drive-in plays with light wonderfully. For lovers of jump scares and gore, Dauberman doesn’t shy away, and the era is styled impressively, with corduroy, page-boy haircuts and a muted palette adding to the atmosphere.

Vampire movies, whether about the bloodsuckers themselves or their victims, still need to be about people, characters and humanity – whether mortal or immortal. A little more time with his characters and less time with CGI coffin-dwellers and Salem’s Lot might have come to life.