31 Days of Halloween: Salem's Lot

2024, Gary Dauberman (Annabelle) -- download

Seriously? A speedrun through a vampire invasion story? You wouldn't think an almost 2 hour movie would move at a break-neck (pun intended?) pace, but here you have it. Arrive in town, piss off some locals, kid goes missing, poof the entire town is vampires. The End.

This is the third adaptation of  Stephen King's original novel, the first in 1979 and the second in 2004. Neither of them have much place in my long term memory though I know I would have seen both. This one will definitely join them in fading away quite quickly.

Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, Top Gun: Maverick) arrives in Jerusalem's Lot ('Salem) sometime in the 70s; he lived there as a kid but since moving away has become a famous author. He has returned to write about the "Marsten House", the local haunted house on the hill. At the same time two mysterious figures have purchased said Marsten House and opened an antique business in town, Barlow & Straker (the original "tee hee" from the book, i.e. Bram Stoker). Ben moves into a boarding house, flirts with a local girl Susan and pisses off some locals as outsiders always do.

I assume the movie chooses to be set in the same time as the book so as to not have to be bothered with dealing with updates to technology and ease of communication?

Then Ralphie (Cade Woodward, Hawkeye) the meek kid disappears on his walk through the mysterious woods with his older brother Danny (Nicholas Crovetti, Boy Kills World; and not The Boys whose role is played by his twin brother Cameron). For some reason there is no mention of the town interrogating weirdo outsider Straker (Pilou Asbæk, Game of Thrones) who the kids detoured into the woods because of. The "some reason" is because the movie doesn't have time for such nonsense as logic and plot flow. Ralphie was actually taken my Straker and fed to Barlow as some sort of sacrifice to begin the take over of the town. All rather symbolic I guess, cuz if he is up and walking around, he can just fly around and fest to his heart's content, but I guess he likes the idea of creating a nest of vampires? Anywayz, Ralphie takes his brother Danny a few nights later, and Danny takes the gravedigger Mike (Spender Treat Clark, Glass).

Not long after, school teacher Mr. Burke (Bill Camp, Joker) invites Mike to stay at his place because Mike doesn't look so good. In any other movie, there would be some inherent creepiness to the bachelor 50+ schoolteacher inviting a younger man to stay in his spare bedroom, but Burke presents as the trustworthy nice guy. Alas Mike "dies". In the spirit of the speed run Burke has concluded, "VAMPIRE !!" but still has called in the cops and the local doctor (a wasted Alfre Woodard, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur).

Immediately after, Danny and Ralphie's mother also dies and the Fearless Vampire Hunters, now including Ben and Susan, approach the doctor for support. Since she has the mother in her morgue, it should be easy enough to show her evidence. Yeah yeah, moving sheets and the doctor is quickly bitten, BUT she has a rabies shot so that keeps her from turning into a creature of the night. You would think that could become an important detail in saving more people in the town.

But no. Almost immediately after pretty much everyone is already a vampire. No town meeting, no murmurs in the cafe that is half empty, no people hurrying home before the sun sets. Just boom your town is empty, except at night where they perch on roof tops like an evil Snoopy in a tree (that's a reference for the old farts in the room). The doctor doesn't even bring along a bag of rabies shots.

After a failed attempt to kill the vampire at the source, losing Burke, Susan and a priest who joined their ranks the remaining FVH are the Doctor, Ben and Mark, best friend to Danny, armed with all the knowledge his horror comic books can provide him, seek out where the nesting vampires must lie. In the basements of each of their homes? In some dank & dark abandoned factory on the outskirts of town? In the dangerous collapsing tunnels of the town's shutdown mine? Nope, in the trunks of their cars at the drive-in. At least, you would think, this will be an easy mass kill -- just pop the trunks and stand back, watching the sun do its thing. Alas, shadows. Also, it only takes about 2.5 hours to go from waking up inside a church to arriving, near sunset, at the drive-in. Whatever will they do ?!?!

At least in "Hellboy: The Crooked Man" when they wanted to take advantage of "evil things happen at night" they commented on how local time followed Devil Time, as in night comes up awful quick, with days that only last a few hours and nights that go on forever.

Anywayz, the Doctor gets shot by a Renfield (I wanted to make a pun about "with an Enfield" but the Enfield Shotgun is a motorcycle) and the sun falls down, goes boom, along with the drive-in screen, which does allow for at least a handful of vamps to eat dying light of day sunbeams. Alas, Mr. Barlow makes his appearance, buuuuut Ben uses Mark as bait, as we all know that creepy old vampires love succulent young boy flesh, and is able to stab him thru the heart. So much for supernatural vampire hearing. The End.

At least the previous mini-series attempt to show that some vampires, and their Renfields, escaped the town and Ben is obsessed with hunting them down, but this one is just, "We did it, we killed the Big Bad and are done with it...."

This could have been a decent movie if it had just given itself some pacing. I can only assume Purple Suit Meddling™  dashed any plans they had for a longer movie, or maybe the It idea of two movies? Instead, we seem to rush through most of the "plot" and are hyper-focused on other scenes, like Mr. Burke holding off Mike the Gravedigger with his neon cross -- not literally neon, which would have been cooler, but an effect in this movie in that crosses held near vampires glowed from internal holy batteries, which in effect, gave them a Vampire Early Warning Alert.