There are always plenty of upcoming Stephen King movies and miniseries for fans to look forward to, but one in particular has been anticipated for a couple of years now. Salem’s Lot was filmed back in 2021, but its release was delayed. Ultimately it landed on the 2024 movie calendar, with Warner Bros. making the choice to release Salem’s Lot straight to streaming, and ahead of that October 3 premiere date, critics have gotten the opportunity to screen the film. Stephen King has already shared his opinion of the movie, so what are the critics saying?
Adapted from the novel released in 1975, Salem’s Lot stars Lewis Pullman as Ben Mears, a writer who returns to his childhood home in Jerusalem’s Lot to discover the town is being overtaken by vampires. In CinemaBlend’s review of Salem’s Lot, Eric Eisenberg says Gary Dauberman’s movie ranks in the middle of the pack of Stephen King movies, obviously condensed but sustained by its characters and scares. He rates the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, writing:
It’s a horror movie that makes time to develop the personalities of the characters and their bonds amid a time of extreme crisis (a specialty of Stephen King’s writing), and while it feels rushed in sections and lacks the scope of the source material, it balances the scales with smart story and style ideas.
Fred Topel of UPI agrees that while this may not be the best Stephen King adaptation, the director is pretty successful at streamlining the story into a product fit for the spooky season. Topel writes:
For a story whose previous two adaptations ran three hours each, Dauberman contains it in a tight film with momentum. He builds up the town and the horror, and then forces the characters to band together to fight back, pretty much all in one night once the pieces are set. Salem’s Lot may not reach the upper tier of Stephen King movies that includes Misery, The Shawshank Redemption or even adaptations of Pet Sematary. But as a solid vampire tale, it holds its own alongside It and Sleepwalkers and above many of the lesser adaptations.
William Bibbiani of The Wrap has an even higher opinion, saying Salem’s Lot raises the bar and may be the only Stephen King remake to get it right. Bibbiani calls the flick “a scream, with shockingly good jump scares, rousing heroics, and laugh-out-loud jokes.” This upcoming horror movie definitely deserved its day on the big screen, the critic says, continuing:
Salem’s Lot is convincing evidence that sometimes studios don’t know what they have, because Warner Bros. has a banger on their hands. It’s a monster movie in all the best ways, unapologetic about its love for its characters, unapologetic about its love for its monsters, and unapologetic about its love for the audience. It’s a bloody great remake, and a bloody great time.
Tom Jorgensen of IGN, meanwhile, doesn’t agree, saying that while the movie kicks off well enough with a strong sense of identity, it slowly gives way to nonsense when the monsters are introduced, leading to a frustrating experience overall. Jorgensen rates the movie a “Mediocre” 5 out of 10, saying:
Salem’s Lot is one of the most aggravating Stephen King adaptations in recent memory. Writer/director Gary Dauberman builds some undeniable atmosphere and assembles a likeable enough cast of townies-turned-vampire hunters, and when it’s content working on a more intimate level, it has some real strength. And then, the vampires show up in earnest – and fittingly, the movie too loses its soul.
Jacob Oller of AV Club appears to concur, grading the movie a D+. In the process of streamlining the novel for the screen, Gary Dauberman has delivered a “scareless, slick, vampire-slaying horror, robbed of its small-town drama.” More from the critic:
Salem’s Lot isn’t a disaster (far worse horror films have made plenty of money at the box office), but a bloodless and frail version of the story drained of its vitality. The human details that make King’s novel compelling beyond its campfire-story premise are reduced to shorthand or discarded entirely; all the folksy drama, fear of outsiders, and period signifiers are boiled away. From the streaming-centric opening credits—with rivulets of blood trickling across expository documents and a map of Maine, evoking Game Of Thrones, Shogun, and Rings Of Power—Salem’s Lot feels optimized, streamlined, and totally defanged.
Anytime a Stephen King book is adapted into a movie, characters and/or plot have to be cut, and we already know about two major changes from the novel. However, the critics aren’t in agreement over whether the director created a fun, character-driven scary movie or something with a little less soul.
If you’d like to check this out and form your own opinion about the Stephen King project, you can fire up that Max subscription starting Thursday, October 3.