Dark Shadows

The reason that this film is overwrought, which can be ignored until the climax rendered in the style of “since we don't know how to elegantly finish this, let’s just set it all on fire”, is not its excess of comical characters whose eccentric behaviour will generate accompanying jokes, of which there are two times more than would be necessary. Rather, the problem consists in the attempt to offer each of the characters a respectable amount of space and to briefly clarify what their problems are and how they intend to resolve them. Even that could be dealt with in the space of two hours. With a screenplay that intertwines the individual storylines and justifies, for example, why the title sequence (which, based on my conservative approach, should be determinative) promises that we will be initiated into the mystery of the Collins family through the disinterested gaze of a visitor from outside, though a pale dandy immediately becomes the star of the evening. ___ Rather than the goals of the protagonist and the others being clear from what they do, we can only more or less guess at what they may be. At every moment, emphasis is placed on a different motif, to which the characters' actions are subordinated. Barnabas is obviously out for revenge, but why not forget about that for a moment when there is a possibility to enrich the film with a few lascivious shots of Eva Green, particularly her legs and cleavage? Ghosts, green vomit, a Chevrolet Impala and Alice Cooper were incorporated into Dark Shadows according to the same logic, i.e. we have an attraction, now let’s come up with a way to shoehorn it into the plot. Everything happens as if in stand-alone episodes, with no internal order, without a more organic interconnectedness. ___ Due to the narrative’s lack of cohesiveness, a good two-thirds of the film is spent waiting for things to finally get going. The filmmakers can’t conceal the fact that the source material was a soap opera with twelve hundred episodes, i.e. part of a television genre whose modus operandi is the endless dilution of nothing. ___ Burton probably wanted to revive the time of his childhood as he perceived it through the lens of an outsider kid. This would explain making the undoubtedly remarkable political context taboo, because at the age of ten, you are more interested in Scooby-Doo than in the bombing of Cambodia. However, that is not an excuse for the degradation of the gothic restyling of the visual aspect into an easily marketable brand, mainly so that it looks “Burtonian”, and letting the camera nicely sell it in colour-coordinated shots that are short on plot. Another best-seller is the heavily made-up Depp making unnatural movements. It’s not necessary for his vampire to be characterised by gestures and grimaces that are different from those of the several dozen movie vampires that came before him or for him to utter truly funny lines; it suffices entirely to come up with enough situations in which he will look like a fish out of water, which is another of Burton’s mechanically repeated trademarks. ___ Unfortunately, the inappropriateness involves more than just the situations in which Barnabas finds himself. Scenes that would be suitable for a serious gothic horror movie or a tragic romantic epic are placed alongside scenes bordering on exploitation trash or parody. Sometimes the transition from the comical to the serious even happens within a single scene (the sit-down with the hippies). The uncertainty as to what will come in the next shot has a parallel in the uncertainty of how Barnabas is actually supposed to be perceived (to go even deeper, this is a reflection of the society-wide uncertainty that was as characteristic of the 1970s as it is of today). At one moment he is an amusing fop and then he acts like a regular horror-movie monster with whom it’s impossible to sympathise despite one’s best efforts. ___ Thanks to this, and because of it, Dark Shadows does not correspond to the fairy-tale division of roles into good and evil. It is not a fantasy world turned upside down in the Burtonian manner, where the traditionally bad guys are the good guys. The confusing fact that neither good nor evil has a clearly defined and stable form is a manifestation of insufficient creative control over a film that, without the rushed ending, might have worked as a series pilot, but in and of itself, it is a film whose attractive surface only draws attention away from the skeleton of the narrative, whose sole purpose is nothing more than to carry that nice-looking skin to market. 60% (16/05/2012) (less) (more)