Back From the Shadows

Dark Shadows

Tim Burton, 2012

3.5 Stars

It has been nigh on two centuries since I’ve sat down at my desk (and by desk, naturally I mean hunched over the coffee table… it’ll be a good while still until I find myself actually writing on an actually desk) and reviewed anything. A shame really, with this Spring’s spate of Joss Whedon films, the entirety of Heroes having been worked through, and a decent handful of heart-wrenching season finales having littered our screens.

Of course, there are excuses for this absence; for a good six months, I was without computer, my trusty laptop having given up the ghost after five years of faithful world-weary service. Add to that the mania of funerals, health scares, and the ever-looming thing they call “real life”, and I have to admit that quite honestly, I have not been arsed.

But, after umming and ah-ing for the last few weeks, I figured that it’s time to give this old girl another chance to rise from the grave, and hopefully this time, much like Tim Burton’s newest outing, it might turn out just that little better than expected…

Dark Shadows, as every review/trailer/interview/marketing mogul keeps reminding us, is Burton’s eighth outing with long time collaborator Johnny Depp. The film, a retooling of a seventies soap opera, of which, I must admit, I was completely oblivious to the existence of, tells the tale of the accursed Collins family, a tribe of New England settlers who unfortunately fall foul of a love-lorne witch.

Depp plays Barnabus Collins, a vampire. It’s obvious casting, and one can’t help but feel that Depp perhaps wasn’t actually the best of choices for the role. He flounces around a lot and does his generic faux-cockney Sparrow/Todd/Crane accent and tis all in good fun, but y’know what? I would’ve got Michael Keeton to do it. Ho hum.

The supporting cast (as let’s face it, with Mr. Depp out front, that’s all they’ll ever be) try their best, with Jackie Earle Haley as the groundsman of the Collins’ estate certainly coming close to stealing the show. Chloe Moretz, in her ever-increasing weirdness, is a delight as the moody teenage daughter, and Alice Cooper and Christopher Lee cameo to great effect. That said, the cast member who I personally was most excited about, Johnny Lee Miller of Trainspotting fame, unfortunately wins the award for “most unnecessary character of the century”.

With Burton, however, it’s not story (good, ‘cause there ain’t exactly a coherent narrative) nor cast that we’ve come to anticipate, but simply the knowledge that when we sit down to something from the mind of Big Tim, we’re in for a couple of hours of visual delights and outright weirdness. 

Alas, for me at least, this is where the film fell a little flat. The comedy was there (a stand out being the two hundred year old vampire’s rendition of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”), and the set and costume was immaculate, managing to capture Burton’s image, whilst at the same time encapsulating the cheesiness of the American soap opera ethos. Unfortunately, however, it simply wasn’t weird enough. The supernatural tone of the film seemed completely forgotten during the central act, and one can’t help but feel that if one or two of the plethora of revelations that are made in the last ten minutes were made a little earlier, we would’ve have a much more interesting experience all round.

In all, Dark Shadows is a decent enough movie; certainly far better than the last few films Burton has spewed out, this time feeling much more like his more passionate earlier work, rather than a movie for spectacle’s sake (see Alice in Wonderland). Just don’t go in expecting Beetlejuice and you shouldn’t be too disappointed.