Producers: Michael Clear, Roy Lee, James Wan and Mark Wolper Director: Gary Dauberman Screenplay: Gary Dauberman Cast: Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard, Bill Camp, John Benjamin Hickey, Jordan Preston Carter, Pilou Asbæk, William Sadler, Debra Christofferson, Spencer Treat Clark, Nicholas Crovetti, Cade Woodward and Alexander Ward Distributor: Warner Bros./New Line/Max
Grade: C
The third time isn’t the charm for adaptations of Stephen King’s second novel, a clever 1975 vampire saga. Actually the first, a 1979 television mini-series directed by Tobe Hooper, remains by far the best, not least because of the presence of a superbly sinister James Mason as Straker, the vampire’s amanuensis. A second mini-series, directed by Mikael Salomon, came in 2004; it was adequate but inferior to Hooper’s take, as Donald Sutherland was to Mason. Now Gary Dauberman, one of the screenwriters for Andy Muschietti’s two-part theatrical version of King’s “It,” offers a third adaptation, which whittles the massive tome down to feature length. It’s the weakest of the bunch, as well as the least faithful; all make some changes to King’s book, but the ones here are particularly ill-advised, designed to juice up the narrative to meet today’s audience demand for action set-pieces. And its Straker, Pilou Asbæk, is pretty pathetic.
Of course the basic outline remains. Author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, even more pallid than his predecessors David Soul and Rob Lowe) returns to his childhood hometown of Salem’s Lot, Maine, to investigate an old house that’s long haunted his memory. It’s just been purchased by Straker and his oddly absent partner Barlow (Alexander Ward), who open an antique store in town. Barlow is quickly revealed as a ravenous vampire, though he doesn’t appear, a ghoulish Nosferatu, until late in the action.
To make a very long King story short, Barlow begins turning townspeople into vampires, starting with young Danny Glick (Nicholas Crovetti), and from them the epidemic spreads. Though it takes some convincing, Ben eventually teams up with a bunch of cohorts—teacher Matthew Burke (Bill Camp), transfer student Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter), alcoholic priest Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey), local Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard), and perky librarian/romantic interest Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh)—to battle the menace. (The police chief played by William Sadler simply runs away.) Despite setbacks that result in some of them perishing, they have a measure of success.
Inevitably, though in the seventies its resuscitation of a genre that had grown moribund had a certain revelatory impact, given the avalanche of vampire movies that have come down the pike in the last fifty years “Salem’s Lot” can’t help but feel rather old-fashioned now. And the not-so-special effects in this version (glow-in-the-dark crucifixes, for instance) accentuate that.
Dauberman tries to combat the seen-that feel with some innovations. One sequence, in which Mark takes refuge in a tree house when pursued by a mob of vampires, is fairly effective, if hardly groundbreaking. And the idea behind expanding the finale to a bigger location isn’t bad. It’s ruined, however, by a ridiculous alteration of one character, Susan’s mother Anne (Debra Christofferson), who’s transformed into a shotgun-toting, cowboy-hat wearing termagant spewing out furious threats. True, her presence does drag out the finale mercilessly, which viewers accustomed to such protracted exhibitions may enjoy. But it’s part of a clearly intentional decision to add humor to the mix, which mightn’t be a bad idea if it weren’t done so crudely.
Nobody in the cast comes off especially well, but given the uninspired script one can understand why the performances (save for the mincing Asbæk and scenery-chewing Christofferson) are so muted. On the technical level things aren’t much better: the production design (Marc Fisichella) and costumes (Virginia Johnson) are undistinguished, though the period feel is adequately caught, and while Michael Burgess’ cinematography manages an occasional nice image—like the abduction of Danny and his brother (Cade Woodward) seen in silhouette from a distance as they walk through a forest against the backdrop of a sky in which the sun is just beginning to set—for the most part it’s pedestrian. Luke Ciarrocchi’s editing sometimes feels abrupt, the result perhaps of directives to trim some scenes, while the score by Nathan Barr and Lisbeth Scott is what you’d expect, nothing less but nothing more.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for a movie of King’s novel, stick with the Hooper mini-series, or, in a clinch, Salomon’s.