Welcome back to Jerusalem’s Lot. Stephen King has been writing books and having those books adapted since the ‘70s and this film does a good job at recapturing the peak of King’s aethos, borrowing as much as from Flanagan as King himself – it’s no coincidence, perhaps that Flanagan owes much to King – a cycle repeating if you will. Gary Dauberman – director of Annabelle Comes Home, owes much of a sticking point to its small town Americana. We get to know the neighbourhoods in which these people inhabit, the movie drive in, a staple of King’s works, the Church, the school – the haunted murder house – it’s a treasure trove of mysteries that seems much more fascinating than the film wants to let you experience them – just as it’s getting started, it rushes towards its conclusion – and feels over so suddenly that it never really takes aflight.
There are moments in Salem’s Lot that feel cool. The cinematography, of the two boys – walking home towards the start where one of them gets abducted, is a good usage of imagery to evoke unease and danger. At the end, there’s a final close-up that feels immaculate in its conception. Yet the rushed-ness of Salem’s Lot and its cheap made-for-tv-effects feel like it lacks the imagination of King’s novels that made the idea of it so likeable. The slow burn mystery takes the classic King tropes – the children going missing, the lost writer protagonist that would fuel much of his later works, it’s all here. It’s refreshing to see Bill Pullman’s son, Lewis – in the lead role; he’s a commendable King-writer type, awkward but honest, not given enough attention to truly be fleshed out but safe in the knowledge that his book is a failure and coming to Jerusalem’s Lot in search of a hit to spark his career. Outside of that we have a variety of characters that anyone who’s read the book or seen Tobe Hooper’s original attempt will be familiar with – Mackenzie Leigh puts in a commendable performance as the trapped Susan, who will do anything to get out of her small town but is held to it by her overprotective mother. The relationship that forms between Lewis’ Ben and Susan is instant and rushed – the one week later time jump skipping over set-up that could’ve been important.
The oddball group that Ben is able to bring together makes Salem’s Lot feels lived in like a real collection of townsfolk – it’s a nice place; if a town that seems like it’s on its way out – stuck in the past, a dead town with nothing and nobody. Everybody is trying to get out. His mates are teacher Matt Burke (Bill Camp), Doctor Code (Alfre Woodard, who gets some of the best lines), Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey), and Mark (Jordan Preston Carter) – there was the potential there for some real clash of debates between the religious and scientific approach to Vampires; but there was also no need – once the horror is present it doesn’t take long to convert Doctor Code for her need for survival. These characters you just start to care about the more the film progresses – but never quite enough for them to be memorable other than being familiar Stephen King characters. The finale is somewhat cool and escalates the tension with the usage of Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown being played repeatedly throughout the film – yet the creative nature of some of the shots are let down by the underwhelming CGI that dominates part of this film – a vampire child floating through the window for example feels a pale imitation of Tobe Hooper’s miniseries. There’s also a music cue for Donavan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man, which fails to do much other than evoke the superior David Fincher thriller Zodiac. But it does create the essence of fear and dread quite well – that the sudden upswing of vampires increasing in their numbers do, starting with the children. The film’s commitment to following standard vampire lore leads to questions like “why didn’t they just burn down the Marsten house?”
For all the fleeting moments of promising and creative imagery; Salem’s Lot feels like a movie out of time. It’s shot like a made-for-tv commercial and never boasts the authenticity that it needs to capture small town, end-of-nowhere Americana. The most inventive decision that the film brings to the table is the ability to update the final act – bringing closure to the drive-in theatre and creating a sense of suspense and despair from the moment our survivors get to the car-park. It’s where the film is original and it’s at its most threatening – but when these characters do meet their grisly fate, you don’t really care about them. They show up and then vanish again, and then show up and vanish again – like an initially longer project was made, only to be cut for time. Time is the biggest killer of Salem’s Lot then – maybe best left as a miniseries; which was something that Tobe Hooper was smart enough to realise.
