‘Salem’s Lot was not the first Stephen King book I ever read (that honor would go to the short story The Langoliers) nor was it the one that turned me into a lifelong fan (that would be Mr. Mercedes) but it was the one where I realized how good of a writer he is and that I should maybe start paying attention to him (I wouldn’t do that for a few more years, but the seed was planted then.)

It remains one of my favorite King books.

The story’s basic idea is: what if a vampire came to a small town? But like so many of King’s books, it is so much more than that. It follows Ben Mears, a writer who has returned to the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot, where he grew up, to write about the Marsten House. That’s your classic old spooky mansion on top of the hill, where he saw a ghost as a child.

Naturally, that’s where the vampire lives. But before he gets there Ben makes a friend with a schoolteacher and falls in love with a girl, and meets lots of interesting people. That’s what I love about Stephen King. Sure, he’s written a terrifying story about an ancient vampire taking over a small town, but it is really a story about small-town living and the characters that fill it up.

Tobe Hooper directed a two-part miniseries of Salem’s Lot for CBS in 1979. It is far from perfect, but Hooper understands the heart of the story is its characters and the scares should be built around that. But he also creates some truly memorably scary images.

TNT adapted a version of the story with Rob Lowe in the lead in 2004 but the less said about it the better.

When I heard that had made a new adaptation for Max I was excited. I’m always excited to learn about new Stephen King adaptations. Then I watched the trailer and that excitement flew right out the window. It looked cheap. Worse than that it looked like it was going to rely too heavily on violence and jump scares. Then the reviews started coming in and they were not good.

But it is spooky season and I’m still a sucker for King adaptations so I crossed my fingers and pressed Play.

My friends I am happy to report it is not that bad. It is a long way from great, and you won’t exchange this for the Hooper version in your collection, but it is worth the watching.

They say writer/director Gary Dauberman has a three-hour cut but Max made him edit it down to just under 2 and you can feel it. The movie plays like the greatest hits of the story. It isn’t so much that it jumps straight to the action, but that it shortcuts through everything.

We meet Ben (Lewis Pullman) as he’s driving into town (the soundtrack plays Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” which is a great choice) he meets Susan (Makenzie Leigh) at the real estate office. She’s reading his book but doesn’t recognize him. But by the next scene, she’s inviting him to the movies, and we learn both their stories within a few minutes. Movies always have characters falling in love way too fast, but here it is even faster.

The realization that the weird stuff going on in this town is caused by vampires happens extraordinarily fast as well. Ben’s newfound friend, Matt (the always great Bill Camp) sees a friend in a bar looking a little pale and pekid. He takes him home and notices the guy has a couple of little scars on his neck. Later he thinks he sees the guy scurrying into an upstairs window.

That little bit of information convinces him that the town is full of vampires. He quickly convinces Ben and Susan of this information. Then the alcoholic priest (John Benjamin Hickey). The new schoolboy in town, Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) doesn’t need to be convinced, he already knows. He’s an old-school horror nerd who doesn’t take crap from nobody.

This happens throughout the film. Relationships deepen and plot points happen offscreen, in the cuts. Before I realized that they were literally happening in the cuts, that more details had been shot and then edited out at the last minute I thought it was an interesting story choice. Now it just seems distracting.

But what is left is well done, if a little disjointed. The editing is interesting. There are a lot of shots like one in which a man is alone on a bed. The camera moves slowly to look under the bed, then it moves upward and the room is full of people – a great deal of time has shifted while the camera was under the bed. Or the camera will focus on an object and then it will cut to a similar object in a different scene.

When the violence comes it comes with that frantic modern style of scaring you with jumps, and quick edits, which is not to my liking at all. They changed the ending quite a bit. Some of it I liked – they moved it from the Marsten House to somewhere interesting. Some of it I did not – far too much generic action. But more or less it worked for me. Or perhaps my expectations were so low that anything not terrible would have been enjoyed by me at this point.