CAST: Eva Green, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena
Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller; DIRECTOR: Tim Burton;
WRITER: Dan Curtis, John August, Seth Grahame-Smith; GENRE: Comedy / Fantasy;
PRODUCED BY: Richard, D. Zanuck, Graham King,
Johnny Depp,
Christi Dembrowski, David Kennedy; CINEMATOGRAPHY: Bruno Delbonnel;
EDITING BY: Chris Lebenzon; DISTRIBUTED BY: Warner Bros.;
LOCATION: United States; RUNNING TIME: 113 minutes
Technical
Assessment: 3.5
Moral
Assessment: 2
Cinema
rating: For viewers 14 years old and above
Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet—or
at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor,
Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave
mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch,
in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death:
turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later,
Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed
world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand
estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family
have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets.— Warner
Bros.
Tim Burton revives the classic cult series
through Dark Shadows, tagged as a “murderously funny fantasy”
starring Depp as Gothic vampire Barnabbas Collins. The movie may be
escapist, all right, and with production designer Rick Heinrichs providing the
atmospheric interiors, exploited to the max by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel,
and topped off with the tingling score by Danny Elfmann, it does provide an
elegant and glamorous escape, whether or not you go for vampires or Goths.
For a bit of history: the original Dark
Shadows, Dan Curtis’s vividly melodramatic ABC-TV series, pioneered the
use of supernatural elements in soap opera. It ran weekdays from
June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971, amassing 1,225 episodes, which is more than
most other sci-fi series, including Doctor Who and Star
Trek. Now—both director Burton and star Depp have professed to being
obsessed with Dark Shadows in their youth, and especially with
debonair vampire Barnabas Collins, the series’ most memorable character.
Those who have seen the original (even internet-smart kids
nowadays can download the complete original series) would naturally compare
this Dark Shadows to the original concept; they might notice that Burton’s
adaptation relies for impact on jokes and special effects instead of the
foreboding atmosphere of the original. The dashing vampire playboy is
sometimes overpowered by Depp, the go-to for such bizarre character roles, who
as the vampire resurrected after 200 years is a stranger to the modern world
circa 1971, when they had only television. Imagine how that vampire would
react had he lain underground for another 40 years, when we have internet and
all that! Anyway, it’s an old team, as Burton and Depp also collaborated
on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.
Would you want children to see Dark
Shadows (2012)? Why not, as long as you warn them it’s
fiction. There’s a lesson somewhat to be learned here about fooling
around with love. Jilted women (like the witch who falls madly in love
with Collins) could give you hell even if they can’t turn you into a vampire or
curse your whole family; they could be witchy enough to make your life really
miserable, even if only through Facebook. Depp’s role here exhibits a
mellowed character towards the end, who—although as a vampire he also inflicts
harm on others—may not be totally unredeemable.
