Dark Shadows : Followed by a spoiler-filled rant.

Dark Shadows: The Tim Burton adaptation

There is a sketch comedy skit about Tim Burton “conceptualizing” his next film project… he takes a creepy concept, makes it more creepy with plenty of black and white stripes, casts Johnny Depp and his wife, uses the same music tempo, and then throws it all together with a film about being a misfit in an uptight community. The thing is, that formula isn’t necessarily a bad thing and he often utilizes it to interesting effects… but he also does it over and over and over again. Dark Shadows is a revisit to the same predictable formula, but it isn’t a bad little trip down familiar roads oft travelled before. It’s often cute, amusing, and whimsically dark… the whole film tends to hinge on Johnny Depp as Barnabus Collins, so much so that we’re sort of left with just Barnabas Collins at nearly every turn.

Dark Shadows has a number of characters who we could have followed in various scenes, but we spend so much time with Barnabus in little gag moments that many of those characters just feel wasted. Michelle Pfeiffer, a brilliant actress who could have brought so much to her role as the family’s matriarch, is reduced to momentary appearances to spout exposition and provide comedic statements that are meant to hide Barnabus’ true nature. Chloe Moritz is mesmerizing, but we hardly get to know her character before the sudden climax of the film, and villainous Angelique is played up as lacking any depth at all for the severity of her curse upon Barnabus. Burton scoops out the whimsy and sprinkles it throughout the film, leaving the audience with just enough of a taste to pass the time but nothing of any substance really get a good meal out of.

Dark Shadows was a fun ride, but severely lacking in several areas. Still, if you’re in the mood for a Tim Burton film, this is a fun movie.

SPOILER ALERT:

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You’ve been warned…. Alright, rant ON!!!

The ending of this film was saccharine sweet and completely without value. It’s meant to be “romantic” but just sort of wallows in this uncomfortable cash-in on giving a “Hollywood” ending to a story with a little more pathos than the conclusion warranted. Barnabus Collins spends the film lamenting his cursed immortal state, feeling badly for every person he’s forced to kill, and that each death takes away a little of his soul. He’s a monster, he knows it, and he knows what it all means….

So when the new “Love of his life” informs him that there’s only one way for them to be together, he rightfully states that to do so would be nothing short of damnation for this woman he loves. A short time before this big moment, keep in mind, he chastises Angelique for wanting to possess him, not love him. So the woman he professes to love throws herself from the cliffs, and he dives after her… sinking his fangs and changing her into a vampire, despite knowing that this is a curse of damnation, that each person she kills will mean tearing away bits of her soul, and that this will happen for all time.  He turns her into a vampire… and we’re told, through voice over, that his “curse” is lifted when she joins him in vampiric immortality.

Is this supposed to be a “feel good” ending for the film? Barnabus Collins now gets to watch the woman he loves devour her own humanity, her own soul, under his watchful eye over the next several hundred years… this is what happens when you give vampires the sparkles, ladies and gentlemen. You get twisted morality like this, where its’ wrong for Angelique to want to possess the charismatic Barnabus, but it’s totally alright for Barnabus to condemn the woman he loves to an eternity of inhumanity.