Salem’s Lot: Was It Worth the Wait?

Robert Dunakin ‘26 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Stephen King adaptations are a harsh mistress. When done well, they can be critically acclaimed (The Shawshank Redemption), box office hits (It), or cult favorites (The Dead Zone). When done poorly, they can be critically panned (The Dark Tower), box office bombs (Doctor Sleep), or cult favorites (Maximum Overdrive). Salem’s Lot achieves a rare feat in the world of Stephen King adaptations: it is absolutely mediocre. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the film, but it is also to say that there is not especially anything right with it. It proved so unmemorable that I kept forgetting to finish watching it for the sake of this review. There is an adage in filmmaking that it is worse to be bland than bad. If ever there was a film to prove this, it is Salem’s Lot. 

‘Salem’s Lot follows Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), a writer haunted by childhood nightmares of the wicked Marsden House, a dilapidated mansion overlooking the quiet town of Salem’s Lot. Mears is surprised to discover the house has been purchased by the enigmatic Richard Straker (Pilou Asbaek) and his unseen partner Kurt Barlow (Alexander Ward). The town is as surprised as he is – home to a scant two thousand residents, even one new arrival constitutes news. When strange disappearances begin to plague the town, Mears finds himself drawn into an eerie mystery, with the sinister Marsden House and its new residents at the center. As other residents – schoolteacher Matthew Burke (Bill Camp), his student Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter), and physician Doctor Cody (Alfre Woodard) – begin to recognize that something evil is afoot, they are brought together in a battle against the forces of darkness. 

The film’s biggest problem is its source material: Salem’s Lot, the novel, is more than six hundred pages long. Previous adaptations were made as television miniseries, running three hours or more. Mike Dauberman’s new film attempts to fit this story into less than two hours – credits included. It is not that Salem’s Lot is an especially complex or nuanced premise: an epidemic of vampirism slowly takes over a sleepy Maine town. The problem is instead that King’s novel is structured to unfold gradually. The strength of the author’s work is not, usually, in its premise. Instead, it is in characterization and the gradual build of tension, something which director/screenwriter Gary Dauberman affords himself very little time for. As a result, Salem’s Lot is left feeling as though it has excised its entire second act. We meet the characters, we introduce the threat, and suddenly we are at the climax. There is minimal suspense or escalation, and character development is just as scant. It feels almost as if it relies on the audience being familiar with the book or previous adaptations to fill in the blanks. With every character introduction, Dauberman seems to say: “hi! This is Susan Norton … you remember, from Stephen King’s book and Tobe Hooper’s film … anyway, onto the next.” 

Cutting Dauberman significant slack is the fact that his skills as a director exceed his skills as a screenwriter. Salem’s Lot is well-shot, with a strong sense of setting that anchors it tremendously. Dauberman successfully captures the homey, bucolic small-town Maine that King’s novel describes, and for all of its one-dimensional characters, the town manages to still feel like a lived-in place. Credit here should be extended to Michael Burgess, Dauberman’s cinematographer, as well as the set decorators and costumers. These departments were given more to work with than the actors. Dauberman chose to retain the seventies setting in which the book (and original film) were made, and like the physical setting of Salem’s Lot, the time frame helps the film immensely; it has a sense of place with arguably more characters than any one of its human performances. Even when actors and characters are uncompelling, they are uncompelling in a visually interesting way. 

Lewis Pullman satisfies in what it feels both appropriate and premature to term “the Lewis Pullman part.” Ben Mears is the archetypical King protagonist, the alcoholic writer intent on exercising his personal demons by returning to his sleepy Maine hometown. The chronological first of these characters in King’s work (Salem’s Lot being only his second novel), Mears is less interesting than later iterations on this formula like The Shining’s Jack Torrance or It’s Bill Denbrough. As a protagonist, Mears comes off as something of a cipher, moving from scene to scene because the script and story demand it. His relationship with Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh) comes off similarly; while the pair have chemistry, the breakneck pace of the story does not allow it to gel. Character parts suffer even worse, despite being placed in the hands of capable character actors like Alfre Woodard and William Sadler, the supporting cast struggles to contribute meaningfully to the proceedings. Again, frequently it feels as though characters are written in only because they were present in previous iterations of the story, failing to justify themselves within this latest film. 

Although comparisons to Hooper’s 1979 film feel largely unfair, an aspect that beggars comparison is Pilou Asbaek in the role of the villainous Straker. As portrayed in Hooper’s film by James Mason, Straker is as suave and seductive as sinister – there is a joviality to his person that makes it difficult for one to describe why he makes them uneasy. Donald Sutherland carried this into the 2004 mini-series adaptation, proving one of the high points of this otherwise justly-forgotten take on the novel. For Pilou Asbaek’s Straker, one is reminded of his turn as Euron Greyjoy in Games of Thrones: he is evil. This is direct, to the point, and unequivocal. Granted, this is probably an extension of the economical approach taken to storytelling and characterization across the film, but Straker feels as though he suffers the most. Salem’s Lot is a horror story. Horror is frequently best defined and best remembered by its antagonist. The reason James Mason’s Straker beggars comparison is because it was so vivid and memorable. Asbaek is adequate in the role but does little to enliven or inhabit it. His menace extends only so long as he is on-screen, and the audience is unlikely to wait in suspenseful anticipation for his next scene. 

Salem’s Lot, generally, suffers from a lack of suspense. It has too much ground to cover to linger on scenes, and this, ultimately, is its failing. Dauberman does not give his own script time to breathe. The film has to work so hard to get from point A to B in the time it has afforded itself that it leaves the audience with only the most superficial impressions of any one aspect. I think I liked Lewis Pullman fine as Ben Mears, I honestly didn’t have enough time with him to tell. Dauberman does well enough at replicating the characters, setpieces, and atmosphere of the novel, but he fails to give the audience time to appreciate – or sometimes even notice the film’s strengths. The choice to truncate the source material so severely overshadows nearly every other aspect of the finished product, leaving it difficult to recommend to all but the most ardent horror or Stephen King fans. For any meeting those criteria, Salem’s Lot is an inoffensive, if frustrating, experience. It should neither be sought out nor avoided. If you were considering seeing it, you won’t be too disappointed, you just won’t be especially satisfied either.