What happened to Tim Burton?
Where has the Tim Burton I grew up watching and respecting gone? It used to be when Tim Burton’s name was attached to a film you paid attention. You anticipated the dark visions he had waiting for you on-screen, wondering what perverse ideas he was willing to explore next. He built an entire career with films like PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, BEETLEJUICE, BATMAN, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, ED WOOD, MARS ATTACKS!, SLEEPY HOLLOW and BIG FISH. Wow… that’s some run of movies to be recognized for… making it far more unfortunate that over the past decade, he’s tainted his own name and his own style with lesser films that stylistically have become paint-by-numbers templates of what a Tim Burton film should look like. They’ve also become creatively hollow, devoid of the wonderment of which Burton’s films used to be overflowing. For the last decade or so, Burton’s films have grown colder and more detached from the immersive worlds he used to create, and whether it’s laziness or complacency or a bit of both, this isn’t the Tim Burton I used to really love. PLANET OF THE APES, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, SWEENEY TODD, ALICE IN WONDERLAND… one might be a misstep, two a fluke, but more than three is a trend. Burton’s films have snowballed to the point that when his name is attached to a film these days, you’re left wondering just how soulless this one might be. And that brings us to DARK SHADOWS, which might wind up being the emptiest of them all.
For source material that Burton and his longtime collaborator Johnny Depp (this being their eighth film together) supposedly love, DARK SHADOWS feels like a property they desperately wanted to get their hands on, and then, once they did, had no idea what to do with it. It doesn’t stay true to its melodramatic roots nor does it elect to go campy in spoofing its soap opera nature. Quite simply, DARK SHADOWS never comes to the realization of what it wants to be, and, as a result of this identity crisis, we’re stuck with a film filled with half-realized yet mostly forgotten story arcs and a novelty that quickly wears off after about 20 minutes. Most damagingly though, DARK SHADOWS serves as a concrete reminder that the Tim Burton of old, the one who always seemed capable of bringing another unique story our way, is very likely gone, and I don’t know that he’s ever coming back.
DARK SHADOWS dips into the mythology created by the original ABC daytime series, where vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is accidentally released back into the world more than 200 years after he was imprisoned in a coffin. Going from 1760 to 1972 is quite the culture shock, yet all the mileage the film is able to get out of this fish out of water scenario comes in a quick montage with the resurrected Barnabas observing the bright lights of a neon McDonald’s sign, discovering blacktop and hearing the new music of the day. With that out of the way, there’s about 90 minutes of movie left to fill, and nothing left worth watching to fill it with. Depp seems to be having some fun in his portrayal of Barnabas, pulling tricks from his Captain Jack Sparrow bag to at least bring about a character worth remembering after you’ve left the theatre. But it’s almost as if Depp and the rest of the cast are acting in two entirely different movies, with neither side in on the jokes of the other. Barnabas continues to act as a proper Englishman of the 18th century, and yet the rest of the Barnabas clan (Michelle Pfeiffer, Chloe Moretz, Jonny Lee Miller and Gulliver McGrath), who are encountering their long lost relative for the first time seem largely unfazed by his bizarre speech and behaviors. To make matters worse, side stories involving Moretz, McGrath and the family’s new governess, played by Bella Heathcote, who may or may not have a link to Barnabas’ past, are quickly built up as if they’re going to go somewhere in the larger picture of DARK SHADOWS, only to get no attention paid to them for large bouts, before haphazardly being resolved during the film’s disaster of a finale, where supernatural shit of all kinds are thrown at the walls in the hopes something cool might stick.
The brunt of DARK SHADOWS revolves around Barnabas’ on-again, off-again love affair with Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), who, when denied the vampire’s romance, goes on a scorched earth rampage against him, his family, his loves, his business and his legacy. Too bad watching a vampire and a witch do battle over the future of the fishing business in their harbor town seems rather trivial when there’s far more interesting things that could have been done with these creatures. As a result, their conflict seems rather lame, when we’re being told of others who can see ghosts and communicate with spirits. Rebuilding a cannery or jockeying over ports at that point doesn’t even register.
DARK SHADOWS does have its moments early, but the novelty of seeing Depp’s Barnabas stick out like a sore thumb (which only the audience seems to realize) quickly grows tiresome. That leaves a lot of screen time to be filled with something, and, for this film adaptation of DARK SHADOWS, it’s not comedy and it’s not drama. Whatever it is, it’s just not very good.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
Follow me on Twitter.
