“Salem’s Lot” (2024) refers to a quaint Maine town in 1975 with a few new arrivals. R.T. Straker (Pilou Asbaek) is setting up a new furniture shop and preparing for his partner, Kurt Barlow (Alexander Ward), to arrive from London (Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” shout out). Author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, Bill’s kid) returns after leaving the town when he was nine years old under the cloud of tragic circumstances. Eleven and three quarters year old Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) is new to school, makes an immediate strong impression and adores magic and the supernatural. When the denizens start disappearing, becoming ill or dying, no one knows what the cause is. This straight to streaming on HBO Max film is the first feature adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a vampire epidemic that threatens the town and maybe the entire US.

“Salem’s Lot” (1979) carries the weight of being the scariest miniseries during my childhood, especially Barlow, who resembled Count Orlok in “Nosferatu,” and floating vampire children demanding that their kids come out to play. The second miniseries was released in 2004 and was more memorable for its cast with Donald Sutherland as Straker and Rutger Hauer as Kurt Barlow. I don’t even think that I watched “A Return to Salem’s Lot” (1987). As much as I would love to have the time to rewatch everything and do a comparison, unlike the undead, I have a limited amount of time and just dove into the newest iteration, which is not a good movie, but is not entirely irredeemable and has a few nuggets of gold that deserved a better setting to truly showcase them. Good or bad news first?

Let’s start with the bad. “Salem’s Lot” only coalesces once the vamp epidemic has taken hold and even then, it feels old-fashioned in a stale way. The characters of Straker and Barlow are not terrifying this time around, which is a criminal underutilization of Asbaek though Barlow has stepped up his fashion game with sequins and resembles Marilyn Manson if he decided to get rid of his hair. The glowing wooden crosses feel dated though it was made now, and there is something too simplistic about retaining the Christian mythology in the “vampires rules” without any further nuance, especially with Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey) stuck on the sidelines. Ben does not feel like the hero in this iteration. The makeup on Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), an aspiring real estate agent, avid reader and apparently the only young hot single woman in town, is so pale makeup that it is easy to think that she got infected before Barlow even arrives. The characters feel more like archetypes, which is not the cast’s fault. The story presents itself as if you already know how it is going to unfold, which we do, but considering that director and writer Gary Dauberman introduces the fresh elements that do work, it feels like a missed opportunity that he did not engage in such reinvention throughout the entire film, or that he did not have more control over the final product. Everyone cannot be Todd Phillips.

Vampirism becomes a metaphor for the underlying, long-standing ugliness at the root of the town, like what Dauberman did in “It: Chapter One” (2017). While politics is never mentioned, when delinquent Sheriff Parkins Gillespie (William Sadler) describes how the town is dead, and the US is next, it becomes obvious that it is a story about ineffective bystanders unwilling to protect themselves from bullies and monsters. “It’s not alive. That’s why he came here. It’s dead, just like him. That’s why he could take over like that. And the whole country’s going the same way too. You just watch.” It’s the best idea introduced late in “Salem’s Lot” and never fully fleshed out, but it is the one thread that consistently appears from the beginning to the end of the film. The opening scene shows how money trickles down into abuse and the silent threat of death and willingness to sacrifice human beings to earn an extra buck as the movers unwittingly bring Barlow’s coffin into the Marsten house, which has its own terrible past. Then the teachers allow a bully to beat up Mark then when he retaliates, no one intervenes except the Red Sox fan Matt Burke (Bill Camp). There is an innate hostility against outsiders if they are not toxic. When the stakes are raised, the adults are too sensible and paralyzed to fight the vampires. A child will lead them.

There is a lot of race bending in the casting, and it works well though it would have helped if the change in characters’ skin color also continued in their behavior. Don’t let the glasses fool you. Mark feels like the real, lone, action protagonist, and for an ordinary kid, he is almost uncomfortably ready for the vampire apocalypse from minute one, which Dauberman neglects to explore though he does recognize how disturbing those implications are. Mark has zero qualms about defending himself from human or vampire threats and is the only character who has a real handle on the infestation. Unfortunately, “Salem’s Lot” commits the cardinal sin of letting a Black boy have the only Black parents who hear the word vampire and do not immediately get out of town. Unrealistic, and it would never happen. Also the film loses its handle on vampire mythology and is inconsistent with exactly when a vampire can enter a home.

Another welcome change is the gender bending of Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard, who is good in anything). While as a woman of science, she does not believe in vampires, once she sees the signs, she does not play around and lets the profanity fly. Her reactions are the most relatable. She realistically fumbles her first time at bat, but she finds innovative ways to counter vampire attacks and is a quick study on learning the rules. Woodard is always deft at balancing nerves and resolve so when Dr. Cody becomes the only voice of town authority who does not waver, it still feels like they stand a chance. (They don’t).

While short-changing of Straker, is a mistake, it was a bit of inspired work to flesh out Susan’s mom, Ann (Debra Christofferson), as an unspoken member of the 54% who seems like an overprotective mom but is actually a harmful one. She does not want Susan to date an outsider, but is fine with Richie Bodin (Declan Lemerande), who is implied to be an inhospitable, hostile presence. Ann plays “Nearer, My God To Thee,” which is a Christian hymn, but if your faith in Jesus only yearns towards death and is not a threat to vampires, then you’re doing it wrong. Dauberman was a genius to develop the threat that certain women pose to a younger generation of women using their parental role as a disguise for control and destruction. “Longlegs” tried to tease out this concept, but it got lost in the atmosphere.

Spencer Treat Clark deserves an award for giving his all to characters that soon get quickly forgotten whether in “Salem’s Lot” as grave digger Mike Ryerson or Werner von Strucker in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” He has been doing the Lord’s work since he was a child in “Unbreakable” (2000), and I cannot wait until he gets something more substantial to sink his teeth into.

If you really want to enjoy “Salem’s Lot,” it may be worth fast forwarding fifty-minutes before watching. That last hour is better than “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” (2023). The denouement setting is so fantastic, so American, so cinematic, it is worth an overall mediocre slog, and Quentin Tarantino would approve. It was an actual improvement to the original ending.