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Critic Reviews
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When Salem isn’t being deliberately outrageous, it’s cultivating a dynamic that could be fruitful as things move along.
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Not all of the acting works all of the time, but the cast holds it together when necessary, guided with assurance by Montgomery, who alone deserves another episode or two just to appreciate.
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There's plenty of room in the graveyard for Salem, although it's way too early to tell if it can effectively build on the scary and sensual elements introduced in Sunday's premiere.
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WGN America's first scripted drama is American Horror Story Lite, a conventional dark fantasy with an unconventional angle on history. [18/25 Apr 2014, p.101]
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Salem as a whole reflects the difference in the work of West and Montgomery. Yet its wildly uneven premiere has enough going for it to make me watch at least another episode.
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It’s a poor man’s “American Horror Story: Coven” but with more shrieking and less fun. On the upside, Janet Montgomery makes for an intriguing sorceress.
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West and the rest of the cast perform solidly as well, and once we know the lineup, presumably we’ll dive deeper into the game.
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While Salem isn’t bad, necessarily, it doesn’t conjure any magic, either.
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Salem is replete with scenes that make little sense. It’s mostly a jumble of decent enough special effects, less-than-decent acting, a script that also should be lashed with “10 hard ones” and lots of blood-curdling screaming.
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The writing is merely serviceable; the acting is uninspired; the scary stuff comes off as silly.
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The Salem pilot is rather plodding except when occasionally punctuated by these more gonzo scenes.
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The supernatural drama lacks in dramatic tension and suffers without the self-aware humor that made the similarly themed American Horror Story: Coven work so well. [28 Apr 2014]
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Salem uses real life to prop up its shallow theatrics, and the result is too distractingly tacky to be enjoyed as pure foolishness.
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Welcome to Early American Horror Story, which could give you whiplash from all the clashing acting styles, from Seth Gabel's foaming-at-the-mouth over-emoting as zealot Cotton Mather to Shane West's monotonously mumbling and too-modern hero John Alden.
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The melodrama is thicker and more implausible than the tarlike gunk oozing out of that tree at the beginning of Sunday's premiere, but there are adequate performances to balance the painfully over-the-top dialogue, at least.
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It’s like watching the cast of “One Tree Hill” put on a production of “The Crucible.”
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 87 out of 116
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Mixed: 13 out of 116
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Negative: 16 out of 116
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Jun 16, 2014This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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Apr 20, 2014
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Nov 22, 2014