Burton spirals into shadows

Rating: 4/10 (11 January 2013)

A featurised reimagining of a TV soap opera, Tim Burton returns with a gruesome dark comedy about a XIXth Century vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), the entrepreneurial creator of a fishing empire in the town of Collinwood, who is unwittingly released from his eternal coffin prison. His bloody urges must be quenched, hence blood splatters, but still Barnabas is an eternal with honour and a strong attachment to family ties. Hence he decides to live with his descendants in his family mansion, populated by Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), her daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), her brother-in-law Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), nephew David (Gulliver McGrath) as well as an assorted crowd of alcoholic psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), caretaker Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) and babysitter Victoria Wnters (Bella Heathcote). The latter bearing a remarkable resemblance to Barnabas's long departed beloved and ultimate cause of his accursed state. To his surprise the Collins fortune has largely fallen into disregard, whilst the town's fishing business is currently overrun by Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), the witch responsible for turning him into a vampire.
Admittedly an immense Tim Burton fan "Dark Shadows" is sadly his worst picture apart from "Planet of the Apes". Possibly revisiting the same actors has strained his ingenuity a bit, as well as caused the actors in force to go through familiar motions. As such Johnny Depp seems like a mold of other Depp-Burton characters, which is further not helped by the Depp and co's dry delivery of dry humour, which makes this dark tale thoroughly humourless. Knowing everyone in the cast is brimming with talent makes the overall dourness of proceedings even more striking. Depp seems emotionless beyond interest, Carter struggles to imbue any presence, Green is an empty if pretty shell, Haley barely registers, while Moretz comes off whiny and pretentious. The story wiggles around trying to bring together a coherent plot, but instead seems like a poorly glued together sequence of scenes of varying quality, which fail to either construct a story or instill any sense of affinity towards any on-screen character.
Conversely Burton's sense of glorious Gothic atmosphere is at its best with set designs and rummaging shots quintessential stuff and possibly some of the best in his career. However thrown into such a detached and pointless story it just seems like an immense waste of possibilities.