Salem's Lot

Starring Actors and Actresses

This Stephen King novel turned movie turned mini-series surrounds a town called Jerusalem's Lot. It is about the beauty and the dark side of small town life. 'Salem's Lot is a quiet little place with a dark past. A menacing house on top of the hill overlooking the town is persistent in the back of the townspeople's minds. When Ben Mears comes back to his home town to research a new book, he finds that the town's dark past is catching up with it.

I'm a Stephen King fan, so right there, I like this movie (or mini-series as it were) somewhat. I haven't read the book, but many times during the movie, I found myself wishing that I had read the book.

Like many King novels turned movie, Salem's Lot wasn't destined for the big screen. Consequently, the movie had its low-budget moments. Strike one.

I'm also not a Rob Lowe fan, so there's another strike against the film.

I can't stand Donald Sutherland - Strike three. Luckily for Salem's Lot, we work off of a five star system.

Salem's Lot did a good job with the vampire lore. It didn't try to reinvent the genre. If anything, it paid homage to the traditional story of what a vampire is. That was refreshing after seeing so many other movies that tried to revamp the vampire (sorry, that was bad).

Andre Braugher probably wishes that he didn't have to be in Salem's Lot. He's such a talented actor, and his talent really helped save the movie. I suppose the same goes for James Cromwell, although he wasn't at his finest - although that was probably because of the script more than anything.

All in all, the director...uh, just a second here...Mikael Salomon...huh...did an okay job, but it wasn't really a good job, sorry to say.

I probably enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. I generally enjoy vampire movies that are filled with action (Blade) or comedy (Buffy) ~ mainly because I too often think the writers/directors are taking themselves too entirely seriously about a creature that we've been watching movies about since the beginning of the century. (I'm talking about YOU, Van Helsing slash Underworld. Wait, they were two separate movies?)

But this one, in all of its Stephen King glory, kind of got me hooked. I can definitely see why it was created as a miniseries. Three hours was far too long for its weak premise, but split into three nights, I would have had fun anticipating what was going to happen. (I feel the same way about The Stand. Ohmigoodness, that's going to be a fun one to review.)

There's not a word strong enough for how I feel about Andre Braugher. I've adored him for nearly ten years now, and he honestly got me past the first half hour of this movie. But I'm also a Donald Sutherland fan. He is so consistently over the top that you can't help but enjoy his performances. In this movie it worked particularly well.

The weakness of this film and probably that of most miniseries is the sheer number of characters. I found it difficult to even care when yet another townsperson became a vampire. It becomes ho-hum after a while which is a no-no in a movie that is supposed to be filled with suspense. Plus, toward the end, they kind of morphed from cool vampires into boring zombies. Guess they exceeded their special effects budget...