Mr. Barlow Wants to Meet You!
Main cast: Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh
Director: Gary Dauberman
Well, that’s one way of adapting Stephen King’s second novel, ‘Salem’s Lot.
I guess another way would be to, you know, read the ENTIRE book and adapt THAT, instead of reading the first half, and then sort of guessing at what you THINK might happen in the second half. I mean, that’s what I would do.
But then, I’m not writer/director Gary Dauberman. Man, has he had an … interesting screenwriting career. Previous credits include developing the Swamp Thing TV series in 2019, writing ANNABELLE, the first IT in 2017, THE NUN, and IT CHAPTER TWO in 2019, so as you can see he’s all over the map, some good, some terrible, but always horror, so I guess that’s something.
And then we get to SALEM’S LOT.
If you’re over, say, 15, and your parents raised you right, you know the story: writer Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT) has returned to his hometown of ‘Salem’s Lot (short for Jerusalem’s Lot) to do research for his next book. In this new version, he looks at a few slides in the library, but then that plot point is very quickly dropped in favor of even more quickly establishing a relationship with local girl Susan Norton (played by Makenzie Leigh, Gotham).
As the two get closer, a shadow begins to fall over the town. Just before Ben showed up, two more strangers came to town, Straker and Barlow, to open an antique shop and take up residence in the local haunted house, The Marsten House, which gets WAY more attention in the King novel, and a passing mention here.
To be fair, the two previous filmed adaptations of SALEM’S LOT have been multi-night television events and now we’re finally getting a feature film-length version, so some of the details of the plot are gonna have to be scrapped.
Luckily, in this version, one of the details Dauberman decided to keep was the true nature of Barlow and Straker as vampire and familiar, respectively, and what they do to the town.
We start, as we do in the novel, with the abduction and murder of Ralphie Glick, followed by his brother Danny, followed by Mike Ryerson, which is where teacher Matt Burke comes in and enlists the aid of Ben Mears and Susan Norton. Then we learn of the death of the Glick boys’ mother, and that brings us Dr. Cody, this time played by Alfre Woodard in an attempt, I assume, to give the movie some gravitas. Meanwhile, 11-year-old Mark Petrie is also dealing with vampires when Danny Glick tries to come into his room. But horror lover Mark has a graveyard diorama handy, from which he plucks a cross and banishes the undead from his room.
And just like in the novel, one of my favorites from King, before you know it, the entire town is turned and it’s our heroes against the vampires as they try to also enlist the help of local priest Father Callahan.
And then Dauberman must have stopped reading because what follows from here is a total fiction and is found nowhere in King’s novel. And I’ve read that book twice, so I know for sure none of this stuff happened.
Unfortunately for you, I’m not going to give away any more plot details, you have to see this trainwreck for yourself.
But let’s talk about the good for a minute. Lewis Pullman is giving his all here and plays a pretty good Ben. Leigh does a good Susan. Bill Camp is a decent Matt Burke and Alfre Woodard makes a hell of a Dr. Cody.
I just wish they’d been given more to DO here. We go VERY quickly from small town story to vampire movie, like in ONE scene we’re in the thick of it. The beauty of King’s novel was in the pacing and how he took his time decimating the town. But here, it’s a week since the first Glick boy went missing and then, over the course of TWO NIGHTS, the whole town is gone.
And it was the evening of that second night, as the sun went down, that the main characters see proof and accept that, yes, it’s vampires. And by then, Matt and Mark have already decided Barlow is the source and they go after him.
I mean, everyone in SALEM’S LOT seems to be doing their best work, so the acting is pretty solid throughout.
But the pace. There’s a reason King’s novel succeeds so well and that’s because he allowed the story to breathe, allowed the town and its people time to come to life before killing them all. But here, a quick scan of the credits shows characters with first and last names, characters who were PART of the book, and they’re all given a passing glance here and then sent on their way.
Honestly, I don’t even remember most of them being given a name onscreen. There’s no time, we’ve got a LOT of story to get through and less than two hours to do it, and anyway, have you seen that incredibly ridiculous third act that has nothing at all to do with the book? We’re burning daylight here, people … then again, so did the characters. In every scene, they seem to come to a realization about what to do next, they get there and then it’s a race against the clock because the sun’s going down in thirty minutes. I turned to me wife at one point and asked “What the hell have they been doing the rest of the day???”
She suggested sleeping, which, sure, maybe, but we’re never shown that. As far as we know from what’s ON SCREEN, daylight passes in Salem’s Lot every forty minutes and our characters never stop to rest.
I’ve always wanted a MOVIE adaptation of this novel, but now having seen one, I’m not sure those kind of time constraints work for this story. Unless, like they did with IT, you break it up into two movies, which this story can definitely handle. I mean if Dauberman could turn in a 2-part script for this as strong as he did for IT Chapter One, I say go for it. Then again, he could also have adapted the entire novel instead of just the first half. I mean, seriously, WHERE THE HELL did that last act come from? It wasn’t a terrible idea … in another movie. But this is SALEM’S LOT, and that’s story’s been pretty well-established since 1975. There’s absolutely no reason at all to re-write the ending to such an extent. Condense it for the screen adaptation, sure, I expected that, but THIS?
Now having said all that, SALEM’S LOT did have some good things going for it, too. There were a few transitions that were beautifully done and created a sense of drama.
The effects were strong, and the jump scares worked. The vampires in this one seemed like true monsters, unwavering and unreasonable. You’re not going to talk your way out of being killed by these creatures, and it’s nice to see a vampire onscreen whose only purpose is to feed.
And, honestly, I guess I should just be glad we even got this movie at all. Filmed in 2021 with additional photography in 2022, it could very well have gone the way of BATGIRL. And given how the second half of SALEM’S LOT turned out, I’m not hating the fact its theatrical release was scrapped in favor of a MAX premiere instead. There are certain expectations when you go to the theater, and this one was never going to live up to them. I just might have left the theater in stunned silence as opposed to exiting the MAX app on my TV, opening HULU and watching the next episode of MasterChef.
Dauberman has said, “I like to be as true to the story as I possibly can until it gets a little too unwieldy for a movie.” So the answer is to just pull an all-new ending out of your ass? Because that’s obviously where this ending came from. I’d be more than happy to shove it back up there for him.
In the end, I only recommend SALEM’S LOT for two reasons: 1) It’s a King adaptation, and I think this King guy might go places, so we should support him whenever we can, and 2) because you can’t take my word for it, if you have any familiarity with the original story AS KING WROTE IT, you have got to see this new version and see just how ridiculous it gets in that last act.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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