Dark Shadows Review

It’s odd to think that Tim Burton, a director known for creating ghoulish characters like Beetlejuice and Jack Skellington, has only now made a movie about vampires. Burton’s new film, Dark Shadows, stars Johnny Depp as Barnabus Collins, an 18th century bloodsucker trying to make his way in a 20th century world. The movie is based on a soap opera of the same name that ran from 1966-71, and it has a lot of what audiences have come to expect from a Tim Burton film, namely Johnny Depp as a displaced misfit, some imaginative gothic imagery, and a thin, largely uninvolving story that never lives up to the sumptuous visuals.

The movie’s opening sequence introduces us to Barnabus as he was in the 1700s, a human aristocrat who moved with his family to America where they founded the bustling fishing village of Collinsport, Maine. Angelique (Eva Green), a servant to the Collins family and a practicing witch, turns Barnabus into a vampire as punishment for spurning her advances, riles the townsfolk into an angry mob, and buries Barnabus alive for 196 years. It’s a strong, delightfully overblown opening, full of wailing period melodrama and heaven-sent cries of despair.

When Barnabus is freed in 1972, things take a turn for the tiresome. Angelique has used the time Barbabus spent sub-terra to corner Collinstown’s fishing market, and the Collins family has suffered as a result. Their once immaculate family mansion has fallen into disrepair and familial relations are strained. After he convinces matriarch Elizabeth Collins (Michelle Pheiffer) of his legitimacy, Barnabus vows to restore the Collins family to its former glory, a process that mostly boils down to a series of halfway funny jokes about how Barnabus doesn’t understand modern times. He mistakes a car’s headlights for the eyes of Satan. He’s fascinated by a lava lamp, and so on. Some of the jokes are good for a chuckle, but few stand out, and after a while you get the idea that screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith is using them in place of developing a worthwhile story.

And Grahame-Smith needs to develop a worthwhile story, because Tim Burton isn’t the kind of director who will do it for him. Burton’s got the look down pat. The Collins mansion is a love letter to old world elegance and the town itself is constantly shrouded in two tons of thick Maine mist. The makeup, likewise, is immaculate. Many of the characters’ faces have been drained completely of color, and Depp’s fingernails are extended into long, claw-like digits. It’s a visual rebuke to the vampires in movies like Twilight, who look like they walked off a Hollister bag and onto the big screen.

The problem is that the script provides almost no context in which these visuals can become meaningful. For the majority of the movie, all that’s pulling the audience from scene to scene are the lackluster jokes and a series of subplots no doubt lifted from the text of the original soap opera. A few, like the one about new governess Victoria Winters’ (Bella Heathcote) encounters with a ghost, are at least intriguing, but even those aren’t given enough screen time to properly develop.

Dark Shadows is the eighth film on which Burton and Depp have collaborated, and by now we’ve learned to expect good things from the leading man. As Barnabus, Depp gives a supple performance that’s part mannered nobleman and part wacky sitcom neighbor. He shifts easily between light comedy and a dangerous, sensual intensity that’s more reminiscent of Bela Lugosi than Robert Pattinson. As fun as Depp is, the real scene-stealer is Mendes, who as the villain is given free reign to vamp it up and chews the scenery into itty bitty bits. These are good performances, but ultimately they too are left floating in the void left open by the script. Dark Shadows is a movie that doesn’t bother aiming for greatness, and ultimately ends up landing just a notch below good.