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Salem's Lot will stream on Max starting Thursday, October 3rd.

One of the joys of being a constant reader of Stephen King's horror novels is seeing how the master applies the trappings of the genre to whatever story comes to mind. His second novel, 1975's “Salem's Lot,” used the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula (and the vampire story it inspired) to explore the slow death of small-town America. It is a topic that is still of great relevance and importance today, which often causes me grief when film adaptations of the author's works occur: how often the essence of King's texts seems to be lost in translation.

The experience of watching Max's new “Salem's Lot” – which follows two previous versions of the miniseries, the first directed by Tobe Hooper of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” fame – reflects exactly what writer Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) when he returns to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine. As he arrives with the goal of finishing his latest book, the sights and sounds immediately evoke an environment befitting a King story; Captivating shots of the idyllic small town of Maine provide the perfect setting. (Yes, “Salem's Lot” was filmed in Massachusetts, but as a proud son of New Hampshire, I'm used to these two states meeting in the middle.) Within the first five minutes, William Sadler, the lead actor in the King adaptation, tries that of a city cop's uniform and Fred Gwynne's pet cemetery accent to scold Ben for not causing trouble under his watch. Good signs so far.

We are quickly introduced to a variety of folksy supporting characters, including real estate student Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), teacher Matt Burke (Bill Camp), outgoing Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard) and horror fan Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston). Fuhrmann). Each of them is world-weary and has small-town street skills that make their eventual collaboration feel like a natural progression for people who have both the awareness and imagination to accept that evil is creeping through their town – in the form of nocturnal, blood-sucking fiends from the afterlife. They are all characters that are easy to get excited about, but you don't get to know any of them so well that their confrontation with death is so impressive.

It is this collection of Mainers who first notice the strange circumstances and disappearances that seem to coincide with the arrival of antiques dealer Richard Straker (Pilou Asbæk) and his mysterious associate Barlow. And when the disappearances begin, director Gary Dauberman really seems to have a handle on the book's simmering horror. As brothers Ralph and Danny Glick walk home together in the woods at dusk – one of the film's most arresting images – Straker's entrance and the capture of Danny is a real punch in the gut. And when Ralph believes his brother has returned home in the middle of the night, Dauberman moves the action from Ralph's brightly lit bedroom to the dark, foggy backyard, pushing the tension to the breaking point. “Salem's Lot” is at its best in these moments, when Dauberman develops a surreality that at times approaches the indelible creepiness that Tobe Hooper was able to smuggle into prime time in 1979. The substance that Dauberman achieves in the first act disappears. It's a dynamic reflected in most subsequent scares – well-structured build-up and uninspired payoff.

As Ben and his new friends quickly come to grips with the nature of the threat to their city, Salem's Lot begins to puzzle over what makes King's idea of ​​vampires as a symbol so powerful. Sure, characters like Matt Burke and Parkins Gillespie (a name fit for a King character if there ever was one) raise stray observations about how the city was in decline before Barlow and Straker came along, and what happened with that Nature of the city is related to society and so on. But none of it has much appeal because you never spend too much time figuring out who these people are or what their history with the Lot is, and that makes their musings seem inauthentic. This makes her neighbors, who turn into vampires, feel inconspicuous and replaceable – and this is clearly reflected in how boring the repeated vampire killings become in the end.

Salem's Lot was the father of numerous other books and films about vampires, and unfortunately this interpretation feels like it's copycatting the novel. The bloodsuckers are treated more like zombie soldiers than like humans who are still conscious – when they're not technically alive – balancing their thirst for hemoglobin with their remaining humanity. “Generic vampire movie” isn't a label I like to apply to “Salem's Lot,” but when Dauberman transforms the sinister Barlow into a near-mute super-vampire monster with CG eyes, it seems to fit. This film is characterized primarily by bright peeping Toms and quick cuts to thoughtless attackers attacking the main characters. As glowing crucifixes are waved around like vampire lightsabers, it seems like there's no real perspective on why this story is even being told. This is particularly frustrating when you consider that what King observed about small-town American life in the 1970s has only accelerated and changed in the last 49 years.

Many of the problems here arise from an overzealous faithfulness to the word (if not the spirit) of the source material. “Salem's Lot” makes a point of touching on almost every major scene in the novel and including every possible character, but there simply isn't enough time to cover that entire scope with any depth. And this is coming from Dauberman, who incorporated a far more unwieldy King bestseller into the scripts for IT: Chapter One and Chapter Two. This went as well as one could have hoped, thanks to intelligent changes: the interweaving of past and present works well on the page, but isolating each time period into its own film might have been the wiser cinematic decision. “Salem's Lot” may be a simple story – it's Dracula in modern-day New England – but simple stories can still take a while to tell properly, and sometimes feel like you're in a trance while telling them does everything it can to control two hours of running time.

Which leads me to the elephant in the room: Salem's Lot was pitched to Warner Bros. Release calendar for years at this point. That's not always an indicator of poor quality, but it's also not a sign of trust, and unfortunately that's confirmed here too. The hectic pace that the film takes on as it progresses seems as if it was introduced in post-production to lighten things up. The final confrontation in the book, a fairly intimate and atmospheric affair, is here transformed into an over-the-top action sequence that feels so needlessly pretentious that it almost must have been the result of a studio note. Some things just don't need to be tinkered with. Dracula proved to be a good enough setting for Stephen King in the 1970s. The people behind “Salem's Lot” are sometimes too content to simply follow the book – but the cracks also show when they stray too far from “Lot.”

On By John Fenwick

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