To talk about my personal history with the DARK SHADOWS source material seems slightly pointless even to me, but let me see if I can bring it around to the subject at hand, which is director Tim Burton's more comedic approach to the televised story of Barnabas Collins, a New England vampire protecting his family (more like his descendants) while fending off those who would do them harm. I'm pretty sure I've seen every episode, having watched the nightly reruns that aired in the city in which I grew up. It wasn't until years later that I understood that "Dark Shadows" was a soap opera shot live on tape, thus the reels of mistakes that humorously plagued the show.
But the original Barnabas, Johathan Frid (who passed away last month), remains one of my all-time favorite vampires, with his buttoned-down manners and fierce devotion to old-fashioned morals and sensibilities. And the best thing star Johnny Depp does with his revamped portrayal of Barnabas is to capture this reserved side to the elder Collins and put him in direct conflict with the times (in this case, the early 1970s).
I refused to get hung up on what Depp, Burton and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (author of ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) lifted from the "Dark Shadows" television series and what they didn't. If the film is strong, I don't care if they fail to lift a single things from the series. But DARK SHADOWS, the movie, reveals some truly disappointing things about the world of Tim Burton, who has taken his outsider, freakshow approach to filmmaking and traded it in for a family-friendly, cliche gothic, unfunny, not scary, and patently uninspired movie, with a smattering of workable elements sprinkled sparingly throughout, most of which comes from the still-serviceable talent well of Johnny Depp.
Depp still has the sometimes uncanny ability to find the heart of even the most bizarre and damaged creatures, and breathe just enough life and spirit into them to make us want them to win. He has created a look that would be suspicious in any century, with pale white skin that practically glows in the dark, long fingernails, and a haircut that looks like it was styled in an oil slick. But Depp pierces through the old-school styles (acting and clothing), he favors to give us an often-moving performance as Barnabas, a vampire not just man out of time, but still in love with a woman who has been dead for more than 200 years.
Most of his troubles stem from his brief fling in olden times with Angelique (Eva Green), a servant at his beloved family home Collinwood, who is rejected by Barnabas in favor of the captivating Josette (Bella Heathcote), who later jumps off a cliff into the sea under a spell conjured by Angelique, who happens to be a witch. The jilted woman manages to transform Barnabas into a vampire and bury him in a coffin for a couple of centuries. Up to this point in the story, the film is told with the same amount of reverence that the TV show existed, and I wasn't instantly against the idea of having it leap into the '70s and go for some obvious jokes. Burton has made several wonderful films about outsiders attempting to fit in/clashing with the world around them, all the way from PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS to ED WOOD and BATMAN. In fact, they're his best works.
The trouble with DARK SHADOWS is that Burton assembles this magnificent supporting cast and does almost nothing interesting with them, and this is a problem that has plagued so many of his recent works, especially the cash cow ALICE IN WONDERLAND. But the bigger problem with Burton's more recent works is that he's recycling some of his "weird-guy" tricks, and every line in the movie is delivered to the third balcony, complete with full volume and sweeping gestures. A ridiculous "sex" scene between Depp and Green is more high-wire act than anything remotely erotic or even titillating.
I will admit, I found Michelle Pfeiffer's take on family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard mildly captivating, but that's more because he continues to have a magnetism about her that will likely never go away. Of course a radish would look dynamic next to the deadly overplayed roles played by the likes of Helena Bonham Carter, Jonny Lee Miller and Jackie Earle Haley. Fairing slightly better is Chloe Grace Moretz as Elizabeth's mopey teen daughter Carolyn. Toss in a couple of throwaway cameos by the likes of Christopher Lee and Alice Cooper, and you've got yourself a gigantic mess.
I'm not even knocking the look of the film, which actually borders on breathtaking every so often. Burton knows how to put a shot together, and he certainly excels at allowing Depp the space to mold whatever character he's playing and add eccentricities where needed. But Burton has lost his way at actually crafting the gloriously dark and sometimes sinister stories he used to do so well, and that has been maddeningly apparent in his last few movies. I'm not quite ready to give up on him, because I have a sneaking suspicion that his next film, the animated redeux of one of his earliest works, FRANKENWEENIE, is going to be a blast. But DARK SHADOWS is a muddled, confused work by a one-time mad genius maybe needs to go off his meds when he's working.
