Cinema review: Dark Shadows

A gothic soap opera.

This is the movie adaptation of the soap opera of the same name. While totally unknown in Europe Dark Shadows was quite a big hit in America and this movie is actually a labour of love for Johnny Depp, who was a big fan of the original and so convinced Tim Burton to do it.

Now of course this movie probably got a special significance for the fans of the original but if you want that you’ll have to look somewhere else. I’m European so I never heard of it beforehand.

As a standalone movie his soap operatic origin are a lot of trouble. A lot of characters are terribly underdeveloped and just sit there as reminder of whatever they were in the original.

For example Chloe Grace Moretz is the “troubled child”, she plays her role beautifully, as usual for her, but it’s a tiny part that practically goes nowhere.

The same applies to everybody else, including Michelle Pfeiffer, another fan of the original, as the “matriarch of the family”.

The only good roles are Johnny Deep, who as the Vampire Barnabas Collins is the de facto protagonist, and Eva Green as the Witch Angelique, the main antagonist. The parts are strange and disjointed but they literally sizzle, especially when interacting there is a chemical reaction between them.

The plot is bizarre, but in the end this is to be expected from Tim Burton adapting this kind of material.

The tone is uneven. Horror comedy is hard to pull off properly and here the various bits aren’t properly connected. The same guy can mercilessly murder some innocents and then be the center of various funny gags.

The cinematography could be better. Burton is noted for his impressive visuals but here he modernized the dated look of the original without going the full way.

Conclusion: A bizarre movie, only a few will like it but there is something in there to at least interest a large proportion of the audience.