“Haven’t I seen this one before?”
It’s a familiar déjà vu, the very same you get any time you sit down with the ‘corn for a Tim Burton flick. His cinematic adaptation of the vampiric TV soap Dark Shadows is no exception.
Born in Liverpool in 1760, Barnabas Collins is the favorite son of the Collins family, beloved founders of Collinsport, Maine. The family prospers in the local seafood trade. Alas, poor Barnabas spurns the wrong servant, Angelique Bouchard, who happens to be a powerful witch. She kills his parents and makes his girlfriend do a swan dive off a cliff. Barney follows suit, realizing upon face-plant that the bitch turned him into a vampire. Shortly after, he finds himself buried alive.
Flash forward to the 1970s. A construction crew inadvertently unearths his coffin and, in his gratitude, he drains them like juiceboxes. He returns to his family home to find the four remaining members of the Collins family limping along, accompanied by a servant, the family shrink, and a governess for the troubled, youngest Collins. Why does young David’s pretty teacher look so familiar, and who’s that running Angel Bay Seafood, the company running the Collins clan into the ground?
You don’t have to be a superfan to know this is a Tim Burton project. Dark Shadows has the same brooding angst, dry quirk and campy kookery as any of the director’s other works, not to mention the same cast. Maybe Johnny Depp has been a pirate so long he’s forgotten how else to approach a role; the displaced Barnabas stumbles through his new world with the same goofy, detached musing as a goth Jack Sparrow.
I have the rare pleasure of being unfamiliar with the source material — a ’60s gothic daytime drama that enjoys favored cult status — so I’m allowed to judge the film as a work unto itself. It’s a rather predictable script (I actually mouthed some of the lines before the actors did) accompanied by gags you can see coming a mile away (although a satanic fast food franchise is worth a chuckle).
You know when an artist you respect remakes a classic song you never really liked? That how I felt about Dark Shadows, except in this case Burton's redoing his own work, which has been waning in recent years. And can he and Johnny Depp just get a room already? They need a celebrity couple nickname; I’m going to go with BurDepp. Thoughts?
As far as the rest of the cast: Bella Heathcote is decent in a bland role as the governess/love interest, as is Eva Green as the villainous villainess. Helena Bonham Carter is always good, so it’s no surprise she makes for a solid ’70s fembot as the family shrink. Jackie Earle Haley makes for a nice, impish servant and Jonny Lee Miller plays the thieving, douchey bad dad to great effect. This just in: Michelle Pfeiffer is still pretty damn hot. In retrospect, Dark Shadows is pretty well acted, but that’s just not enough for me to recommend it.
Bottom line: The people who go to see Dark Shadows solely for Depp or Burton will get what they paid for — the same movie they’ve seen several times before. A more discerning cinephile might want to stay in and rent a real vampire movie, like Twilight. (Double burn!)
This article appears in May 10-16, 2012.