DARK SHADOWS

“Dark Shadows” is the eighth collaboration between director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp and the combination that once regularly produced cinematic gold together, has recently started to look tired and uninspired.  With the exception of the absolute masterpiece that is “Sweeney Todd”, the recent pairings of Burton and Depp have failed to ignite the screen like they once did.  Films such as “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory” and “Alice In Wonderland” do not hold a candle to classics like “Edward Scissorhands” or “Ed Wood”, or even “Sleepy Hollow”.  Even “The Corpse Bride”, which is a film I admittedly enjoyed, fails to have the magic of Burton’s films previous.  So will their latest collaboration, an adaptation of a long running vampire soap opera of the same name, continue this downward spiral or will it regain some of the lost magic?

Moving from England to America, young Barnabas Collins follows his mother and father who come to the new world to start a fishing business in Maine.  By the time Barnabas has grown up, the business has became so successful that the port town is named after the family, “Collinsport”, and the family’s wealth has afforded them the opportunity to build a massive mansion named “Collinswood”.  During this time, Barnabas meets the love of his life, Josette, and the two plan to marry.  However this plan is soon thwarted by Angelique, a young maid who Barnabas once had a brief affair with and who also, unbeknownst to him, is a witch.  After being spurred by the news of the upcoming nuptials, Angelique places a curse upon the whole Collins family.  She then goes about killing Barnabas’s parents and makes Josette throw herself off of a cliff to her death.  To ensure Barnabas’s suffering is eternal, the witch then turns the grieving man into a vampire and has him encased in a coffin that is to stay buried for the next 200 years.

When his coffin is finally discovered and excavated, the year is 1972, and the world is a completely different place from the one Barnabas was forcibly removed from.  After feeding on the local townsfolk, Barnabas sets out to find his fishing business almost bankrupt, and his fabulous mansion home, Collinswood, more or less in ruins.  He enters the mansion and discovers that some of his kin have still survived.  Living in the house is the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, her daughter Carolyn, Elizabeth’s brother Roger and his son David, as well as David’s live-in psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman.  The family has also just hired a governess for David named Victoria, who has just moved into the mansion and is also the spitting image of Barnabas’s lost love Josette.  Finally, the last person living on the premises is the always drunk caretaker Willie.  Barnabas explains to his family just who he is and that he plans to bring Collinsport back to the glory days it once knew, while restoring Collinswood back to its original beauty.  This activity soon reaches the awareness of Angelique, who still lives, and upon learning that Barnabas has risen from the grave, she decides to rid him and his family of this earth once and for all.

 Very early on during the development of this film, alarm bells started ringing in regards to whether or not the film would work.  In early interviews, Burton himself explained that the tone of the film was going to be very tricky and he was not sure whether or not he could make it successful.  This sounded like an artist who didn’t have a complete vision of what he wanted in his head, or if he did, was doubting his vision which gave me a reason to be concerned.  However Burton has appeared to be prophetic about the tone, as it was clearly something that the marketing people have struggled with.  For the record I believe that “Dark Shadows” has been very poorly marketed with both the posters and especially the trailer not representing the true tone of the finished product.  In fact it was because of the trailer that I thought that this film was headed to be a disaster, as it was sold as a “fish out of water” comedy, and while that is certainly a part of the film, it really only takes up a minor part of the film’s running time.  The film just isn’t as jokey as the trailer made it out to be, and while I wouldn’t call the film dark by any stretch, the tone isn’t as light as the trailer suggested.  Instead the film works more like the soap opera it is based, with big melodramatic moments filled with suspense, action and yes, laughs.

While the film is loaded with characters, the main thrust of the story has to do with the dark love affair between Barnabas and Angelique, and as such these characters dominate the majority of the screen time.  Johnny Depp is in top form as Barnabas Collins and he once again proves just how great a physical actor he is, giving his vampire character a very distinctive walk, as well as being very expressive with his claw like hands.  I really enjoyed his performance a lot (it recalls other great vampire characters from classics such as the 1931 version of “Dracula” and the silent “Nosferatu”), as he didn’t go as campy with the role as I feared he might, he actually keeps Barnabas quite grounded.  In fact the only problem I had with the Barnabas character was that sometimes the dark make-up that defined his gaunt cheekbones were a bit overdone, especially during scenes of daylight.  While all of the performances within the film are slightly heightened above reality, I really enjoyed some of Depp’s more grandeur soap-opera like line readings (“And…fight…I…shall!”).  Eva Green is luminous as always, she is just a stunning woman to look at, and Burton gives her every opportunity to look gorgeous.  Unfortunately she does not command the screen as well as Depp and as such the chemistry between the two feels far too forced.  Of all the characters, Angelique is played a little too big, and feels a bit over the top at times.  What I did love about the Angelique character was her “broken doll” appearance towards the end of the film.  It is so well done and for me was the visual highlight of the film.

The rest of the cast all handled their roles admirably although some suffer due to the limited screen time of their characters.  Chloe Moretz as Carolyn probably suffers the most and she is almost wasted here in a thankless role.  She has proven herself as a very capable actress in the past (with roles in “Hugo” and especially “Let Me In”), but I believe this may be the worst performance that I have seen her give.  However, the script doesn’t give her much to do.  It was fantastic to finally see Michelle Pfeiffer in another Tim Burton film, because the last time she gave us her fantastic rendition of Catwoman in “Batman Returns”.  While her turn in “Dark Shadows” may not infect the world of pop culture like her Catwoman did, she still gives a great and strong performance as Elizabeth.  She is still as gorgeous as ever and seeing her brandishing a shotgun in the finale was super cool.  Although he had limited work to do in the film, I really liked Jonny Lee Miller’s turn as the slimy and shady Roger, he always impressed when he was on screen.  As usual Helena Bonham Carter gives an odd but rewarding performance as the doctor who may have ulterior motives, but again doesn’t have a load of screen time.  Australian actress Bella Heathcote is great in the dual roles of Josette and Victoria but her character seems to do a disappearing act more than any of the others in the film.  While she has a fair amount of screen time, there are large chunks of the film where her character is just missing, and she only seems to re-emerge when her character can service the plot.  However when she is on screen she displays a charming presence and she has good chemistry with Johnny Depp too.  

The actors actually do a great job with what they have been given which sadly is not much.  Seth Grahame-Smith’s screenplay is definitely the weak point of the film.  While the dialogue gets a pass mark, it is the structure of the film that needed work.  Things seem to happen just out of the blue in this film with no foreshadowing, especially in the mad finale.  Also as I mentioned earlier, characters have a habit of coming and going, showing up when they can move the plot forward only to disappear again.  The other strange thing in “Dark Shadows” is the weird sexual perversion to it.  Now I have not seen the soap opera that the film is based on, so am not sure whether it existed their previous, but it is certainly unique to any Tim Burton film that I have seen (and I have seen them all), so I am attributing it Grahame-Smith’s script.  From this comes one of the most unbelievable and out-of-place fellatio scenes I have ever seen.  Granted the scene is played for laughs, but “Dark Shadows” was not the film for the scene, it is terrible and needed to be trimmed from the final film.

Typical for a Tim Burton film, “Dark Shadows” looks wonderful.  The gothic setting just suits his visual style to a “T” and in this regard he does not disappoint.  After the visual green screen mess of “Alice In Wonderland” it was great seeing the Burton style in full effect once again.  The opening pre-credits scene is classic Burton and is when the film is at its darkest, and it is a shame that once the film switches to 1972 that darkness is then lost.  The cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel is outstanding (he followed this project by shooting the new Coen Brothers film “Inside Llewyn Davis”) and a special mention must go to the costume designer Colleen Atwood.  Truthfully this is a not an aspect I notice a hell of a lot (except if it is bad) when I watch films, but her work here is so grand it is impossible to ignore.

After re-reading this review I have realized that it is not easy to work out what I actually thought of “Dark Shadows”, and well, I ended up having a really great time with it.  I thought the film was a lot of fun, I know that it has its flaws, but the film is certainly not a bad film let alone the disaster I was expecting it to be.  I absolutely loved the crazy finale (which I know a lot of critics despise) and never once felt the running time passing, which is always a good sign.  While it is not as good as the early Burton / Depp collaborations (it doesn’t come close to “Sweeney Todd” either), it is much better than “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory” and the train wreck that is “Alice in Wonderland”. 

While I thoroughly enjoyed “Dark Shadows” (and look forward to watching it again soon), I do hope that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp separate for a while and recharge their creative batteries.  Burton’s next film is the stop-motion “Frankenweenie” which Depp is not involved in, with the live action follow up rumored to be the sequel to his 1988 classic “Bettlejuice” (although sadly Grahame-Smith is scheduled to be scripting that too), so it may indeed by awhile until we see another collaboration between the two.  In any case, I love the latest work from this talented pairing, flaws and all.

 3.5 Stars.