A film in three parts (and some missing bits)

Rating: 6/10 (5 October 2012)

I watched this recently on DVD. I generally like Tim Burton's films. His visuals, his casting and his tone are consistently great although his storytelling can be a bit up and down. I didn't know what to expect as the reviews of Dark Shadows have generally been bad yet it seemed to do reasonably well at the box office. Here's my take on it.
Dark Shadows is a film in three distinct parts. The first (what I like to call The Setup) is great (9/10). It tells Barnabas Collins' back story and introduces the characters that he'll be interacting with in the film. It is well paced, tells us what we need to know and is beautifully detailed. It effectively builds the film's dark tone, it's "fish out of water" comedic element as well as establishing the 1970's setting. The Setup is quite long but it doesn't feel it. It is masterful and, before it got to the next phase, had me wondering why the reviews were so bad.
Alas. The next part, The Fallout, which begins with Barnabas' re-taking control of the family business, is a confused mess (3/10). Burton has populated the film with interesting characters and yet he doesn't give us the opportunity to understand them. You consistently feel that there's more behind each character and are expecting to discover it during the course of the film but don't. (There is a series of "revelations" in the third part. But these revelations appear completely out of the blue with very tenuous links to information provided earlier and, as a result,seem rather lame). Because of this the characters actually become more distant and detached as the film goes on.
The final part, The Confrontation (?/10), is OK. It has some nice, imaginative touches but since we are now detached, it is meaningless.
I suspect (and would like to believe)that The Fallout was heavily edited and that a lot of the interesting stuff was left on the cutting room floor. Too much screen time is devoted to altercations between Barnabas and Angelique in which plot points related to their relationship are reinforced ad nauseum. Insufficient time is spent on Barnabas' relationship with Victoria and there are a number of scenes (e.g. Barnabas/Carolyn talking about "modern women" and Barnabas/David outside the cloakroom) that feel as though they should have lead to something "meatier" but just hang there, detached. The only sub-plot that is adequately explored is Barnabas/Dr. Hoffman and the reasons for that are somewhat cynically obvious once you've seen the film.
No wonder so many people are disappointed (me included). The film delivers so much in The Set-up, then loses all momentum in The Fallout, leading to a meaningless Confrontation. I'd like to believe that an executive decision was made to cut perhaps a 180 minute film to a more acceptable 113 min. Either that or Tim Burton just got lazy and bored after a masterful introduction.