Salem lot movie common sense media11/13/2022
Had those introductory episodes been five hours of haunted house creepiness interspersed with clever, thoughtful dialogue, I wouldn’t object. #Salem lot movie common sense media full#If, in five full hours of television, you’re unable to generate a single character worth rooting for or even caring about, you’re in a tough position when the next five hours require audience investment in whether those non-characters live or die. Still, they’re vastly more interesting than the sour-faced priest, the sour-faced constable, the sour-faced priest’s sour-faced wife, the sour-faced priest’s sour-faced wife’s sour-faced father, or anybody else in Preacher’s Corners. But the decision to give Charles a trio of children who have Pacific Islander roots is a hollow gimmick, and nothing in their cultural background pays any dividends at all. The three kids are at least slightly sympathetic, with Ens and particularly Gulamgaus providing easily the series’ most dimensional performances. Anybody who has read the story will know instantly that the Filardis are leaving the text behind, but despite the abundance of time in which to introduce and develop new characters, those are tasks that go largely undone. The lack of character development for Rebecca, technically the show’s second lead, is an easy illustration of everything wrong with the first five episodes. She takes a job as governess at Chapelwaite and begins to explore, basically without changing her tone or expression in 10 hours. One could connect the fight between science and superstition in Preacher’s Corners to COVID-19, but not in any way that would add much to the story or that really resonates.Īttempting to get to the root of the Boone family curse is Rebecca (Emily Hampshire), introduced as an aspiring writer and then never given another personality trait. Tensions are exacerbated by a mystery ailment spreading through town, a condition that leaves its victims anemic and sensitive to sunlight. It’s a resentment that ties to behavior by Charles’ ancestors, has everything to do with prejudice toward his biracial kids, and may relate to the seemingly abandoned mining community of Jerusalem’s Lot. Charles fled a family legacy of mental illness and has spent his life on whaling vessels, which somehow didn’t stop him from raising a family of his own, including a nameless, characterless wife he picked up on an island along the way and kids Honor (Jennifer Ens), Loa (Sirena Gulamgaus) and Tane (Ian Ho), who were raised aboard ships, which somebody decided made sense.Ĭirca 1850, Charles’ wife dies at the same convenient moment at which one of his cousins passes away, leaving Charles the family estate, Chapelwaite, in rural Maine, an hour’s carriage ride from the town of Preacher’s Corners, home of a cast of puritanical characters half-lifted from a Hawthorne novel and collectively harboring fear and hatred toward the Boone family, past and present. Oscar winner Adrien Brody, maintaining the same gruff whisper and pained expression for 10 consecutive hours, plays Charles Boone. If the first five episodes of Chapelwaite had been condensed to two hours and the last five episodes had been trimmed to another two, I would still say that the miniseries was a slow burn, while acknowledging that there’s schlocky fun to be had in the home stretch. Chapelwaite is more purely horror and yet somehow duller, especially in a plodding first half. Peter and Jason Filardi’s adaptation for Epix does away with most of the plot of “Jerusalem’s Lot” and jettisons everything insinuating about the story in favor of overly spelled-out and familiar horror tropes that might recall Salem’s Lot. #Salem lot movie common sense media windows#It’s more unnerving than scary, more rats scurrying in the walls than vampire children knocking on windows in the dead of night. It isn’t exactly an origin story for King’s second- or third-most-beloved cursed Maine town, but it definitely involves the author’s thematic fascination with locations in which generational rot descends into pure evil. It runs a few dozen pages and involves only two or three characters. “Jerusalem’s Lot,” part of King’s 1978 Night Shift collection, is a slight but creepy tale. #Salem lot movie common sense media series#Sunday, August 22 (Epix)Ĭast: Adrien Brody, Emily Hampshire, Jennifer Ens, Sirena Gulamgaus, Ian HoĬreators: Jason Filardi and Peter Filardi, from a story by Stephen KingĪnd yes, Epix’s new 10-part limited series Chapelwaite is disappointing, in large part because nobody involved really wanted to adapt King’s short story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” but kinda did it anyway.
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