Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Tim Burton
Quick Impressions:
I noticed that Dark Shadows was getting a somewhat chilly critical reception, but The Avengers had been so satisfying as entertainment for the whole family the week before that I was desperately craving more summer movie fun. Plus, when you go to a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter movie like this, you know what to expect. You’re not expecting a flawless story with a script that’s to-die-for. But you know you’ll be entertained, and we were (even my three-year-old who kept insisting that she was brave enough to see the vampire movie because she wanted an Icee).
The Good:
Johnny Depp’s performance as vampire-out-of-time Barnabas Collins is reason enough to see the movie. Despite some (sometimes glaring) weaknesses with the script, every second that Depp’s on screen, he enthralls the audience as easily as his cursed character mesmerizes the weak-willed in Collinsport. Obviously, Depp has developed quite a rapport with Burton, and his charisma is such that even when we’ve already seen some of the best bits in the previews, the moment seems no less sweet a second time. Depp totally commits to the character and plays Barnabas so straight that it’s impossible not to find him equal parts sweet, wretched, scary, and hilarious.
Depp is definitely the star of the show, but a very strong supporting player is the rich (almost Dickensian) town of Collinsport, Maine, lovingly rendered onscreen in all its water-colored, undead pallor. As always, Tim Burton creates a delectably creepy atmosphere. The family manor is oozing dark charm and seems deliciously haunted in its own right long before the vampire returns to roost there. Like a vampire, the whole movie looks pale and creepy and strangely alluring, lovely in a brooding, Gothic sort of way. (If this were the way Maine had looked in Murder She Wrote, nobody would have mocked the insanely high murder rate in Cabot Cove. The art direction in Dark Shadows makes it clear that Maine is a place where the best years of your life begin after you die.)
After a brief prologue in the late 1700s, we jump ahead in time to 1972. If (like my mother), you somehow look down at the moment that the date flashes across the bottom of the screen, there is still absolutely no way you won’t be one-hundred-percent convinced of the setting by the time you’ve watched the opening scene and “Nights in White Satin” has finished playing in the background.
By the way, the soundtrack in the movie is amazing. It’s like the people in charge of the music yanked a list called “My Favorite Songs” from a time capsule buried forty years ago. Watching and listening, even I started to get incredibly nostalgic for the seventies—and I was born in 1979!
I never watched the TV series Dark Shadows (though I’ve certainly run into rabid fans over the years), so I’m not sure how faithful the movie is to its televised source material. I will say that as you watch, you really get the feel of a dramatic seventies era soap opera. Michelle Pfeiffer, in particular, behaves more like a character on a soap opera than even characters on soap operas do.
Another standout in the cast is Bella Heathcote who looks uncannily like one of the characters in Tim Burton’s earlier project, The Corpse Bride. This girl is eerily striking. She looks like a china doll in a haunted house. And I loved the outfit she wore when she arrived. She looks like her face was created to appear in Tim Burton movies.
Best Joke:
I absolutely loved the first time Barnabas gets on the psychiatrist’s couch. Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp play off each other perfectly, and the scene opens with a joke that isn’t that clever but for some reason really works. It’s also impossible not to react while listening to Barnabas talk to the teenager in the house about how to woo a modern woman.
Best Scene:
The first scene in the 1970s when “Victoria” approaches the town by bus is definitely the best. It establishes a perfect tone for the movie and kicks off a nonstop 1970s hit parade soundtrack. The part with the hippies in the woods is pretty terrific, too.
The Negatives:
I could be wrong, but when I watch a Tim Burton movie, this is the impression I have of his process. He thinks up promising characters, rounds up a cast he’s beyond comfortable with, puts the actors in charge of fleshing out their characters in the kookiest way possible, and then advances the story by moving from one scene that’s mind-blowingly cool to look at to the next visually stunning, eye-catching spectacle. I’ll bet Burton would have made exquisite silent films. With him, you get the vibe that character development, dialogue, and even basic plot elements all just sort of fall into place in the service of advancing the visual journey.
Because of this, his movies look amazing. Each scene is like a spooky painting still wet and dripping with spine-tingling vibrancy.
On the down side, however, many of Burton’s movies would benefit from better dialogue and a more focused, narratively driven plot. Dark Shadows definitely falls into this category.
The movie looks great, and most of the actors just couldn’t be better, but the film would be so much stronger if it had a better script, probably one selected by somebody who isn’t so engrossed in the details of the gnarled trees to know that in satisfying stories, the actors need some character or plot driven reason to wander into the forest.
The script is weak…
Really weak.
Really, really weak. It benefits from having a really out-there premise. (I mean, a vampire rises after 196 years, and his big agenda is to restore his family’s fishing business by rebuilding the cannery and hiring more boats. Oh yes, and a witch is trying to thwart his plans because she’s in love with him. And he’s in love, too, but too confused about the customs of 1972 to know how to woo the lady.) The whole project seems so eccentric and wacky that you get distracted. If it were more formulaic, you’d notice that some necessary elements of the formula are conspicuously missing.
It also benefits from having Johnny Depp as its star. He’s one of the few actors who seems able to create characters ex nihilo. So when he’s on screen, he may not be doing anything (in terms of the advancing the story) important, but he’s doing whatever it is with such panache that the audience really doesn’t care…much. If you go to a movie that gives Johnny Depp a decent amount of screen time, you may sometimes feel puzzled, disappointed, or even confused—but you won’t be bored…exactly. Watching him is, for some reason, a riveting experience.
In fact, most of the cast is pretty interesting to watch, but you can’t say that they have much to work with. Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp have great onscreen chemistry, and Michelle Pfeiffer has such screen presence that her performance seems really strong even though her lines are mediocre at best, and she doesn’t really have anything in particular to do.
Because Dark Shadows is based on a soap opera, every character is quirky and has tons of great, soapy backstory. But most of these (admittedly entertaining) subplots really have nothing to do with advancing the main story (which is of different importance in a two-hour movie than in a TV serial). The characters are great, but they feel wasted.
And Chloë Grace Moretz, a fantastic child actress who has delivered some incredibly strong performances for other directors isn’t used correctly here at all. I’ve seen her in enough roles to feel confident that she’s both talented and versatile, with a fantastic energy that great performers often possess. But you don’t see any of that here, and I’m wondering if it’s a problem with direction. The actors who give the best performances have all either worked with Burton extensively before or have lots of charisma and experience at creating characters. Moretz is really talented, but you can’t tell from watching Dark Shadows. For what it’s worth, I didn’t think Jackie Earle Haley was used well, either. He was much creepier in Little Children. And the highlight of Johnny Lee Miller’s performance was thinking, Wasn’t he Angelina Jolie’s first husband? (Nothing enhances a vibe of eerie romance like thinking of a late mid-to-late 1990s Angelina Jolie.) I’m not saying that Johnny Lee Miller gave a bad performance, but his character didn’t really seem necessary.
Then there’s the predictable (and yet not really logical) Ghostus-ex-machina conclusion of the story, and the very, very vaguely conceived and ill-explained relationship between “Victoria” and Josette. The attraction Barnabas intermittently feels for Angelique is also not really explained, explored, or defined. And what exactly are this witch’s powers? How does her immortality work? Where did she get the ability to transform someone into a vampire? Does she subsist on green cockroaches? Is her skin made of porcelain? Every kooky character has a ton of backstory, but the parts of their stories that are key to the plot are left in frustratingly soft focus for some reason.
Also, maybe it’s just me, but I really found Eva Green’s weird affected “present day” accent very off-putting. I guess she was trying to sound like someone from Maine in the 1970s, but instead she sounded like a French child who was kidnapped at a young age by a family of lumberjacks obsessed with John Wayne.
Overall:
Despite its lacking script, this movie gets an A+ for atmosphere. It definitely held my attention and at times truly captivated me. The establishing scene after the prologue was exceptionally well done and made me want to watch the original Dark Shadows and maybe travel in time back to 1972. Johnny Depp was also very entertaining as the vampire. And this movie also has a truly charming, off-beat, kooky feel that has been missing from a lot of Tim Burton’s stuff since he’s recently found more mainstream commercial success. Dark Shadows may not be perfect, but it really is different and weird and lots of fun. (And apparently if you are a nine-year-old girl, like the ones sitting behind us, it is like the most giggle inducing movie ever.)
I honestly hope they make a sequel because I’m kind of hooked. Of course, if they did that, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, and Johnny Depp would all have to juggle their schedules to get together again and make another movie together. And what are the odds of that happening?