Barnabas BEGINS

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2012)

"Dark Shadows", Rated "PG-13" for Adult Situations, Adult Language, Adult Humor, Some Sexual Innuendo, Violence and Mild Gore. Running Time: 1hr&53mns.
My Take **1/2 (out of ****) -&/or- The IMDb Scale: 6.4/10
I never understood the appeal daytime soap operas. Though, I must confess, I've always been curious about "Dark Shadows," the daytime soap that ran from 1967-1971. I've always been aware of it, but never saw it. This show was set in a dark Maine mansion where family patriarch Barnabas Collins was a 200-year-old vampire. Supernatural occurrences were normal for the series. So were supernatural beings like werewolves, witches, warlocks, zombies and ghosts. They sure didn't have those on "As the World Turns."
"Dark Shadows" was never a mainstream mainstay, though it did gain a cult-like fan following. Now "Dark Shadows" has been re-imagined for a big-screen makeover by director Tim Burton ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Sweeney Todd") and actor Johnny Depp, who are also fans of the series. Depp even claimed when he was a teenager he wanted to be Barnabas Collins. In Burton's new "Dark Shadows" movie, Depp gets to do exactly that.
The film opens in 1760 with the entrepreneurial Collins family leaving Liverpool, England for Maine to further their fishing business empire. The family settles the bustling Collinsport and they build the elaborate family mansion of Collinswood Manor. Growing up in the lap of luxury, Barnabas Collins (Depp, "Pirates of the Caribbean") enjoyed his youth as a wealthy playboy destined to take over the family business. That is until he spurned the love of jealous witch Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green, "Casino Royale") for his fiancée Josette DePres (Bella Heathcote, "In Time"). Angelique uses her dark arts to kill Josette and turn Barnabas into a vampire to mourn Josette for eternity. Framed by the dubious witch, Barnabas is chained and buried alive by the townspeople of Collinsport.
After 200 years of confinement, Barnabas is freed in 1972. His discovery of a certain fast food chain's sign provides one of the biggest laughs in the whole movie. He finds his beloved Collinswood to be a shadow of its former self with only four living Collins residing there. The family is no longer a proud one, but dysfunctional and unhappy. The curse Angelique had put on Barnabas also affected the future generations of the Collins with travesty and despair.
Angelique is still in Collinsport after two centuries. Through her black magic, she has not aged a day. She has made it her life's work to sink the Collins family into financial ruin with her own fishing businesses. Once she discovers Barnabas is back, she resumes her fascination with him and plots to have him at all costs.
As I watched "Dark Shadows," I deeply admired the craft of the movie. Here is a film that doesn't go over the top with CGI to tell its story. CGI is there, but the film relies more on tone, darkness, shadows and the elaborate sets of Collinswood Manor to create a convincing atmosphere for the characters to exist in. I enjoyed the old-fashioned feel to the picture, befitting to the eras we see depicted, which is something many big-budget special effects extravaganzas seem to get wrong.
Johnny Depp is fun to watch as Barnabas Collins. I really enjoyed his appropriately stilted performance as a late 1700s British man muddling his way through 1970s American culture. His observations of music icons Karen Carpenter, Alice Cooper and Steve Miller definitely provide nice touches of humor. Barnabas is a fish out of water. His interactions with other characters are high points throughout the film. Kudos is also in order for Eva Green. She's very classy and sassy as Angelique. She's a great foil to the Collins family.
Though "Dark Shadows" is replete with vampirism, witchcraft, secret identities, re-incarnation, ghostly apparitions and a brooding mansion with secrets, I couldn't help but feel the movie felt a little flat. You would think the film with all these elements would have enormous entertainment potential. In fact, the whole second act is one big lull. As it stands, "Dark Shadows" is like an ice-cold sodapop without the fizz.
I'm not sure if Tim Burton really knew where he was going with this movie. Is this film best served as a comedy? Well, maybe if there were more humor to balance out the story and tone. Is it a drama? For a picture inspired by a soap opera, the normal plot-twists and surprises you would expect to see are absent. Is it a horror film? Not really, but it does borrow overtones from the spooky Republic/Hammer films of yesteryear.
"Dark Shadows" is not a bad film by any means. I kind of liked it, but not enough to recommend it (a bare minimum of three stars are required for that). The film suffers from being a "one-shot." It has all these really great parts to it, but due to time restraints, nothing is really explored beyond the basics. It is like the filmmakers put everything into this picture because they wanted it to be representative of the television series. The problem there is the TV show had time to go into these different tangents over a course of several episodes. The movie does not have the ability to do that.
"Dark Shadows" looks good with great looking sets and spot-on acting. The soundtrack is a great montage of rock songs popular in the early seventies. If anything you can at least enjoy the ambiance the visuals, acting and music provide throughout this picture. The picture is only hindered by a sense of aimlessness. So, Mr. Tim Burton, if you're not sure what kind of a film you're trying to make, then your audience might not know what to make of your film either. I'm just sayin'.