jmstettner-83145

This film is just bad. The camera work is poor. It is difficult to qualify the acting because the story is just so poor and the script is so simplistic.

The city is intriguing and kept me watching in hopes that something more would be done with it. But that hope is never realized. Such a missed opportunity. A lot of questions are generated by the circumstances, the characters, and the enviornment, but none of those questions is ever adequately addressed.

I suppose the film could be "artsy" which has always seemed to me to be an excuse for bad work. Nothing is adequately explained. The story starts somewhere in the middle of something which is hinted at. If you like that sort of thing, then you might enjoy this. If you prefer a story, Arcadian or A Quiet Place or even Elevation are probably better choices.

It is disappointing that this would be Eastwood's penultimate film. Technically, the film is very good and very watchable, but the story itself is so frustratingly full of holes, that while watching I was constantly pulled out of the story to question or criticize the glaring mistakes.

Suspension of disbelief is a requirement of fantasy, sci fi, adventure, and action films. It should not be an element in a courtroom drama. This story relies on the viewer being completely stupid or willing to not question anything. From start to finish, nothing that happens in this story is really believable. The level of coincidence is the greatest problem, the viewer really has to shut off the brain and be a sponge to enjoy the film.

It is a shame that a movie made in 2023 is in every single way worse than a TV Movie version from 1979. The acting is poor. The characterizations are poor. The filming is uninspired. The special effects are particularly unspecial. Even the musical score is weak.

The stage is set in the 1970s, which is when King's story took place and when the book was actually written, so that's nice. The pacing of the story is plodding.

Salem's Lot is a scary book. I understand the desire of some viewers to have 'more story', such as some sense of Barlow before Salem's Lot or his henchman Straker, but that is not what King wrote and I believe it's wrong for directors or script writers to muck about with a creator's work. If they want to tell a different story, write a different story, don't play off an established author's fame. You wouldn't write a book and put it in the dust jacket of a very popular author's book.

In summation, do yourself a favor, find a copy of the 1979 version and watch that. Give this a miss and have that send the message that Hollywood needs to do better.