starts okay, devolves into screeching camp

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2012)

Tim Burton's reimagining of "Dark Shadows" is a mishmash. The original "Dark Shadows" TV series unfolded - sometimes leisurely, sometimes recklessly - from plot to plot, highlighting along the way a variety of characters including a warlock, a "phoenix," various ghosts, werewolves, psychics and spiritual mediums, witches, Frankensteins and mad doctors, professors of the occult, religious fanatics, and endless vampire victims. Time travel warped the chronological flow for months at a time. It was the pull of the overlapping narratives, improbable as they were, combined with the persuasiveness of the characters and the ever-present unifying element of creepy musical underscoring by Robert Cobert that kept audiences watching despite the tacky special effects, botched line readings and wobbly set pieces which, ridiculous as they were, transmitted an otherworldliness which was alien to anything else on the small screen at that time and which even today retains a singular character.
First, let it be said that Burton and his writing team, faced with winnowing out two hours of content from an ocean of possibilities, had to make hard choices. Unfortunately they chose silly camp as their overriding style.
The introductory scenes, set in the mid-1700's and narrated by Johnny Depp, straightforwardly and melodramatically explain how Barnabas Collins, the young heir to coastal Maine seafood canning fortune, is turned into a vampire by the spiteful witch Angelique as punishment for favoring another female. Being supernatural creatures, Barnabas and Angelique never die, so we meet them again 200 years later.
But when we are whisked to the year 1972 as a construction crew inadvertently digs up Barnabas's chain-wrapped coffin, the movie suddenly descends into broad CGI-assisted slapstick and ironic camp, with the most consistent theme being Barnabas as odd man out from another era mistaking electronic or mechanical devices such as automobiles, TVs or neon signs as satanic apparitions.
When we are introduced to the 20th century occupants of Collinwood, the family estate, the movie turns to the style of sometimes clever, sometimes over-obvious drawing room banter. Once the characters have been established the story galumphs along through a combination of montages (some with visual wit) accompanied by 70s pop music and outbursts of violence (fights, explosions, a wild seduction) until the dreary mess finally ends.
The trajectory of the plot - the struggle of Barnabas to save his family from Angelique's curse and reunite with the modern incarnation of his 18th century lover - brings us too often into the outside world of the nearby town with its noises, bright lights and bustle and corporate board meetings and high-lit factory assembly lines, which violates the stark and morbid Gothic atmosphere that made the original series unique. Simple face-to-face dialogues with perhaps a bit of fisticuffs or strangulation, a dash of poison or a bullet or two, are replaced by endless orgies of environment-shattering mayhem, drowning out the melancholia that was one of the hallmarks of the series. We are benumbed. Perhaps the lowest point is reached at a ball thrown by the Collins family to ingratiate themselves with the community which they have alienated over the decades. A remarkably well-preserved Alice Cooper plays himself as the "entertainment," complete with rock ensemble, while four cast members from the original series make a fleeting and utterly pointless cameo appearance as guests among the crowd. They seem insulted, degraded.
Johnny Depp emerges with dignity as the conflicted vampire Barnabas Collins. He makes the character his own while also channeling key aspects of the role's originator Jonathan Frid not only in his almost-British line readings, but also in the way he extends his consonants, particularly his s's, at the ends of words. He maintains a haunted dignity, aided by some beautifully written lines in the 18th century style. The other cast members range from excellent (Chloe Grace Moretz as bratty Collins daughter Caroline) to good (Johnny Lee Miller, as the decadent Roger Collins, who could have been even better if he had been given more of a chance) to sloppy (Helena Bonham Carter, as Dr. Julia Hoffman, who tries to cure Barnabas of vampirism; she too is undermined by the script which makes her sober, thoughtful character into a pill-popping, carrot-haired lush for no apparent reason).
It would be interesting if other directors took a crack at "Dark Shadows." There is much in this iconic artifact of popular culture to draw from and it's a shame to let it go to waste. How about it, Mr. Lynch?