Salem’s Lot review: Dreary HBO Max vampire horror lacks bite

The work of Stephen King has been adapted for TV and film consistently since the author began writing. Some result in classics – The Shawshank Redemption and IT – while other fail to capture the spirit of the story and are forgotten. The latest adaptation of King’s second novel, ‘Salem’s Lot, seems destined for the latter category.

Lewis Pullman stars as a writer returning to his home town of Jerusalem’s Lot looking for inspiration. When he finds that the community is slowly being turned into vampires, he pulls together a group of locals to save the town. 

Director Gary Dauberman’s decision to set it in the mid-1970s, around the time of the novel’s publication, is charmingly retro at first but soon runs out of intrigue. The tension is nowhere near that of the famed 1979 TV series, which brought the story into the zeitgeist, and the shared period setting reminds you of what this new take lacks. 

There are moments that give you chills, and some twists to keep experts from predicting every story beat. But everything feels like a relic of horror’s past, with vampires that aren’t especially scary and characters that just don’t gel. 

Lewis Pullman, son of movie-great Bill, is the kind of stoic-but-troubled hero needed for a King adaptation, but lacks support from his (admittedly talented) co-stars.Alfre Woodard, playing a cynical local doctor, and John Benjamin Hickey as an alcoholic priest, fail to lend his performance much dimension.

Salem’s Lot was released on streamer Max in America, and in all the worst ways this feels like content rather than a spooky classic.