Dark Shadows

Review by Anthony Morris

Is there anyone out there who is legitimately excited by yet another teaming of director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp? 

Presumably they are as this is their seventh film together, and yet it’s not like you ever run into anyone who really enjoyed their re-workings of Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

That’s not to say they haven’t done good work together – Ed Wood is probably Burton’s best film, and even the recent Sweeny Todd was solid – but it’s hardly a sure-fire partnership, especially when they’re working on remakes. 

So the news on that front here is mixed: while Dark Shadows is technically a remake, it’s based on a relatively obscure US soap opera that took a turn for the supernatural back in the 70s and won over a bunch of fans in the process. 

Back in the 1700s Barnabas Collins (Depp) was the son of the wealthy founding family of Collinswood, only when an affair with a housemaid (Eva Green) went wrong – she was a witch – she killed his parents, drove the love of his life off a cliff, turned him into a vampire, and hand him buried alive in a chained up coffin. 

Fast forward to 1972, where girl-with-a-mysterious-past Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) has arrived in Collinswood to work as the nanny for David, the youngest of the Collins. David’s mother drowning in mysterious circumstances, and the rest of the family are looking pretty shaky themselves. 

Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) seems to be holding it together, but her husband Roger (Johnny Lee Miller) is a sleaze, their teen daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) is rebelling and David’s live-in shrink Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) is a drunk.

Then workmen happen to dig up Barnabas, it turns out his witchy nemesis isn’t dead either, and things start to get bloody. While this is superficially enjoyable thanks largely to Depp’s charm, the second any thought is applied to any aspect of this film the whole thing falls apart. 

Not in a plot sense – it never made sense to start with – but it’s pleasures are limited largely to seeing Depp play a likable innocent (though one with a double-figure body count) out of time, while it’s flaws are many and varied. 

Opening with basically an extended flashback, it then takes its time introducing a cast it then almost completely ignores in favour of Depp before piling on scenes that swing from the murderous (Depp is a vampire after all) to the sleazy to the out-of-nowhere-weird. 

Dark Shadows isn’t a complete mess, but only because you’d have to care about it to think so.

2.5 out of 5

Dark Shadows
Australian release: 10th May, 2012
Official Site: Dark Shadows
Cast: Johnny Depp, Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Gulliver McGrath, Helena Bonham Carter
Director: Tim Burton