Just After Sunset

It never occurred to me that Jerusalem's Lot was a sundown town until two of the central characters in the story were racebent. If you don't know what a sundown town is, it's a town where it was illegal to be out on the streets after sundown if one belonged to a despised minority. This was traditionally directed at African Americans, but other not-white peoples have fallen prey to this as well. It is perhaps too much to ask that the new version of Salem's Lot (2024, directed by Gary Dauberman) actually do something with this idea. They almost get it. So close. But, alas, no. The way race is completely ignored in a film set in Maine in 1975 is conspicuous. There aren't a lot of black people in Maine. But this is off in the woods. 'Salem's Lot is a different kind of sundown town, a fact elided by Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" on the soundtrack. A little on the nose maybe, but not wrong.

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