Dark Shadows

Based on the long-running television series, Dark Shadows follows vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) as he emerges from a centuries-long imprisonment into swinging 1972 – with the film subsequently exploring Barnabas’ fish-out-of-water exploits and, eventually, his efforts at defeating his maker and nemesis (Eva Green’s Angelique Bouchard). Filmmaker Tim Burton, working from a script by Seth Grahame-Smith, does a superb job of immediately luring the viewer into the proceedings, as Dark Shadows kicks off with an irresistibly over-the-top prologue detailing Barnabas’ lurid past – with the fast-paced and engrossing nature of this stretch heightened by Burton’s familiar yet compelling directorial choices. And although the film slows down considerably as it makes the jump into the ’70s, Dark Shadows benefits substantially from an initial emphasis on Barnabas’ culture shock as the character begins exploring his new surroundings (eg he refers to Alice Cooper, playing himself, as the “ugliest woman” he’s ever seen). Inevitably, though, the novelty of the premise wears off and the movie slowly-but-surely loses its grip on the viewer, with the increasingly middling midsection, which is devoted primarily to Barnabas’ less-than-captivating efforts at both rebuilding his family business and destroying Green’s sultry character, paving the way for an action-packed climax that’s as conventional as it is tedious. The end result is a disappointingly underwhelming endeavor that stands as the latest misfire from a once rock-solid filmmaker, which is a shame, certainly, since Dark Shadows does possess a good chunk of exceedingly positive attributes (eg Depp’s amusingly broad performance).

** out of ****