Dark Shadows Gets Lighter (And Dumbed Down)

Rating: 3/10 (13 November 2012)

I'm about as big a Dark Shadows fan as the next person who grew up on the series. I feel closer to the Collins Family more to my real relatives, but this movie is like watching a high school drama class trying to act out the dirty secrets of my family at exaggerated and misinformed levels. I was expecting something more from the mind of Tim Burton of "Sleepy Hollow" fame, not the Tim Burton of "Willie Wonka" infamy. To me, Dark Shadows was about a family living in a haunted house, and one of the relatives was a vampire. The campy aspects of it were barely noticeable, but in this interpretation, they are elaborated and stretched thin for comedy effect. Yikes!!! Johnny Depp plays a distant and ignorant version of Barnabas Collins whose best moments are trying to understand the Twentieth Century, and Eva Green plays a much more malicious and unscrupulous Angelique, a far distant cry from the tragically romantic version by Lara Parker. One saving grace is Michelle Pfeiffer as Liz Stoddard who looks timeless in the Joan Bennett role. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Carolyn in very small doses scattered through the movie, and Helena Bonham Carter gives a new spin on Julia Hoffman as a washed-up alcoholic psychiatrist scared of getting old. The movie is very loosely based on the events of the series, the characters are taken in directions they shouldn't be taken and new developments and scenarios are created. Looking very much like one of the animated dolls of "The Corpse Bride," Bella Heathcote wanders through this insane asylum of caricatures and eerily feeling right at home. The final climax between Barnabas and Angelique looks and feels taken from "Death Becomes Her" with some very late plot points and revelations tossed in. I was bitterly disappointed with this film, which at times seems more like one long dirty joke. If it was not for the original Sixties series to compare it to, this adaptation might have stood alone as a parody of horror movies, but instead, I consider it an insult to a series that both inspired my imagination and still haunts my dreams. However, for a truly worthy legacy of the series, it might be best to check out the 1990s mini-series with Ben Cross and Joanna Going that was so unjustly canceled.