A fun parody of the original...nothing more.....

Rating: 6/10 (23 September 2018)

This movie serves as a lesson in setting or having expectations. Fans like me were expecting something in the way of "House of Dark Shadows" or "Night of Dark Shadows", or the original classic TV show. We were somewhat disappointed.
To be sure, Johnny Depp does a good job with the material he was given here. His character however doesn't inspire fear or dread, like Jonathan Frid's, or even Ben Cross's Barnabas Collins did. His character, especially in the second half of the movie, was more of a comic portrayal of Barnabas (a la Dracula in one of Tim Kelly's Dracula plays). Also Eva Green just isn't as delightfully creepy as Lara Parker. Although I love Michelle Pfeiffer, I feel she was totally miscast as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.
To be fair, there were moments of humor in the original Dark Shadows. Most of those however were unintentional (for example, in one scene you can see a stage hand waving a stick around making a vampire bat fly). The series overall however was suspenseful and sometimes frightening: the first two movies had that too. Tim Burton's Dark Shadows has overdone humor, comical special effects, and almost none of the suspense. I enjoyed watching it once, but I'll pass on watching it again.