Salem’s Lot (2024)- A Spooky Season Review
A seemingly impossible to adapt Stephen King novel hit MAX quietly. That has to be a good sign. This movie has been in the can for a while, and had a theatrical release briefly scheduled, before drawing the ire of Stephen King by winding up heading straight to streaming. is it really that bad?
Well, it certainly is better than last year’s Pet Sematary prequel. It is also a far cry from many of King’s best film adaptations, including Brian DePalma’s Carrie, Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, and the most recent two-parter adaptation of It.
A somewhat bland vampire film, with a mostly wasted cast, that has a few interesting ideas and performances to keep you from feeling like you absolutely wasted your time. in the realm of audio description, since this is a vampire movie, it plays a lot with darkness and light, and I thought the description of exactly where the lines of light and dark were was a nice touch, as often the setting sun shrinks the available spaces of light.
I have certainly seen worse King adaptations. I have to believe that one of the previous iterations of this in miniseries form was better than shrinking this down to a palatable length for general audiences. You can tell things are missing, and plot lines go unanswered. While you can do worse, you certainly can do better.
Final Grade: C
