Salem's Lot

"Salem's Lot" is a well paced and perfectly watchable film that often manages to strike out on its own with a considerable degree of success. However, it proves to be a different matter entirely when it tackles the more spooky scenes which had the hallucinatory quality of a fever dream and made the original such a compulsive and memorable viewing experience. It recreates each one of these scenes, but with considerably less effectiveness (this is in large part due to the noticeable absence of Harry Sukman's superb music to magnify and intensify them) and as a direct consequence of this the scenes in question - Marjorie Glick on a mortician's table rising to join the undead, Mike Ryerson returning from the dead and so on - lack the necessary fear and tension in this latest incarnation which just confirms that Tobe Hooper's version of "Salem's Lot" (1979) is still the ultimate in terror.

Overstays its welcome and isn't as interesting as it could've been, but what's there is still serviceable. I really enjoyed the cast, I think every member does a neat job - without that being the case, I'd probably be rating this film a touch lower. Lewis Pullman leads events well, while Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard and Bill Camp are able supports. The kid actors are solid as well, the standout evidently being Jordan Preston Carter. Good to see Pilou Asbæk, too. As noted at the top, this does overrun. It felt a fair bit longer than 113 minutes, a more fitting run time may have worked wonders. I did like how, aside from the obvious, no cast member had major plot armour, admittedly one of the young ones does seem a tad overpowered in regards to what he achieves throughout. All in all, I'd consider 'Salem’s Lot' a narrowly passable horror flick.

For anyone old enough to remember, Coles Notes offered students an accessible summary of famous works, by the likes of Dickens, Shakespeare or Tolstoy. Something similar can be said of the latest cinematic iteration of Stephen Kings book, Salem's Lot. This is an abridged version of Kings vampiric tale. It plays out in broad, somewhat hurried, expository strokes, absent the deeper essence of the work. Things happen quickly, at the expense of a slowly established atmosphere of creeping dread, as the viewer comes to see whats really going on, in the rural town, of Salem's Lot. Indeed, the core of what makes this tale so terrifying, is revealed in the opening scenes. In short, this is Salem's Lot for the impatient. Frankly, the first cinematic production of Salem's Lot, starring David Soul, remains, I believe, by far the best re-imagining of Kings work, to this day. In summary, the latest cinematic edition of Salem's Lot is not awful but it rushes through the story, largely spoiling the atmosphere of creeping terror, I believe, is at the bloody heart, of this nightmarish tale.

Celebrated author "Ben" (Lewis Pullman) returns to his childhood home looking to do some investigations into his own youth when he discovers that there's something distinctly unsavoury going on in the "Lot". That all seems to centre around the long abandoned "Marsten" house whose basement has recently received a strange package before a local urchin goes missing. Luckily for our intrepid writer, he has hooked up with "Susan" (Makenzie Leigh), somewhat sceptical local doctor "Cody" (Alfre Woodard) and with the savvy young "Mark" (Jordan Preston Carter) and as it becomes pretty clear what's going on, they have to work out a strategy that will keep them all alive! This, sadly, hasn't an original bone in it's body - falling somewhere between mediocre Hammer and that "Penny Dreadful" television series we saw ten years ago. The acting is pretty woeful, but no worse than the overly descriptive dialogue and with the possible exception of the young Carter who at least puts some effort into the proceedings, the rest of this follows all too predictable lines before a denouement that offers us nothing new either. Sure, reinventing this particular wheel is nigh-on impossible, but then why make it? It's not as if it has any sense of menace or peril, there are no gruesome special effects or harrowing scenes of gore and blood-lust; it's more like a series of unfunny comedy sketches set in an eerie scenario where just turning on the light (or not going into the place in the first place) might have been a better solution. It's far too long and slow to get going, and all I can think of really is bring back David Soul. Standard television fayre for Halloween, no need to trek to the cinema for this.