By Avery Beaton, Assistant Editor
Dozens of Stephen King’s novels have been adapted into movies, and those movies have then been remade thirty years later. Gary Dauberman’s Salem’s Lot (2024) is the most recent example of this.
This movie, based on King’s novel of the same name, was first adapted in 1979, later remade in 2004. This film tells the story of Ben Mears, an author who moves back to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot to conduct research for his new novel and discovers that everyone there is turning into vampires.
Due to this film being an adaptation, there were many things that Dauberman had to change from the original novel. In an interview with Cheryl Eddy of Gizmodo, Dauberman stated “It’s about really crystallizing it down to the core story elements, the core characters, while hopefully still feeling like there’s other stories that could be going on off screen that’s informing our main storyline.”
Many performances in this film were bad. Makenzie Leigh who played manic pixie dream girl Susan Norton kept the flatness of the character. Pilou Asbæk portrayed Richard Straker, the servant to main villain vampire Barlow, also kept his character one-dimensional.
The script for this film was unbearable at times. Using incredibly cliché dialogue that didn’t help the characters, there were numerous times where watching this film was painful.
The production in this film stood out, mainly due to the rise in over-produced movies. The money was on the screen, in the camera quality, shooting location, and special effects. However, it was lacking in script and performance quality.
Overall, I rate this film 2.5/5. It was disappointing, especially for a Steven King adaptation. I would not recommend watching it, but it is available to stream on Max.
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