Salem's Lot (2004)

Ben Mears attacks priest Donald Callahan in a homeless shelter in Detroit on Thanksgiving. As they corner each other in Callahan’s office, the priest shoots Mears, who then shoves them both out a window onto the street (more specifically, onto a police car). In the hospital where he and Callahan are taken, Ben is asked by an orderly why, as a Christian himself, he shouldn’t just let Ben die for attacking a priest. Ben then murmurs, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” and begins to tell his story. On the day of February 6 two years ago, Ben, then a successful writer, returns to his hometown, Jerusalem’s Lot (also known as “Salem’s Lot” to the locals) in Maine, intending to write a novel. He tells Susan Norton, a waitress and former art student, that when he was a child he accepted a dare to enter the house of Hubie Marsten, a Prohibition-era gangster.

Local legend said that Marsten murdered children. Ben overheard Marsten begging for his life before seemingly committing suicide. Ben believes he heard Marsten’s last victim crying for help, but Ben was too afraid to find or help him. Eventually, his aunt found him. Ben plans to rent the house to bring catharsis to himself and gather material for his novel, but discovers it has been sold by Larry Crockett to antique dealers Richard Straker and Kurt Barlow. Despite the picture perfect façade of the small town, Salem’s Lot is rife with dark secrets: Crockett is an immoral businessman who sexually abuses his teenage daughter Ruth. When Ruth spends time with a disabled garbageman named Dud Rodgers, Crockett gets him fired. Eva Prunier, proprietor of the boarding house where Ben stays, played evil games with Marsten when she and her peers were teenagers. Charlie Rhodes, cruelty-obsessed Vietnam veteran and school bus driver, torments the children he transports.