Movie Review: Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows (2012)



Keeping to my new rule about two paragraphs of synopsis only, here goes: 2012's Dark Shadows stars actor Johnny Depp in the role of Barnabas Collins, a New England vampire who was imprisoned by a jealous ex-lover who was actually a witch. This witch, named Angelique Bouchard, contrives to tempt Collin's one true love to jump off a rather precariously jutting cliff, and when our man Barnabas follows her over, he discovers he is dead, and yet... undead. Keep this moment in mind, it's going to play into the film's final moments (let's put this up front, we will be repeating the whole "jumping off a cliff to save a loved one thing at Dark Shadows's conclusion).



Ok, that's the first six or seven minutes of the film. The rest of our time follows Barnabas after he is accidentally released from his coffin in the early 1970s. See, Angelique had gone and gotten the townspeople to lock him up and bury our vampire buddy alive... er... well, you know what I mean. Barnabas, upon release, eats the crew working on the construction site of the newest local McDonald's restaurant (gruesome to the point of unnecessary, but I suppose it made a needed point about how he is a bad good vampire), and then goes home to his family's mansion to discover his relatives who still live there are a strange and dysfunctional group, to say the least.

Soon we discover that Angelique, as befitting a witch, is still alive and is running the town's fishing interests (and therefore, coincidentally, the town as well). Barnabas gets his family's fishing business back on its feet, and starts putting pressure on Angelique. She returns the favor, by insisting Collins become her lover once more. But he has eyes for a dead-ringer for his lost love who has just moved into the family mansion in the role of governess to the youngest kid. There is a lot of back and forth between our hero (if you'd call him that) and the witch, culminating in a the destruction of the mansion and a big reveal for all the various relatives (one of the kids is a werewolf, the other can talk to ghosts, etc...). The movie ends with Barnabas being semi-reunited with his lost lady love, while a subplot to the movie really concludes the show's presence on screen when we see Helena Bonham Carter in chains at the bottom of the sea. No, I mean we see Helena Bonham Carter's character in chains at the bottom of the sea. That other would have made the film even stranger than it actually was, I'd think, though I am sure there are some out there who would think throwing a famous British actress at the bottom of the sea would have rounded out the many asides that Dark Shadows manages to take during its course. But that is neither here nor there.

Whew. Yes, I know I did three paragraphs instead of two. You can't say I didn't try. I'll work at it harder next time, I promise.

Actor Johnathan Frid, who played Barnabas Collins in the original Dark Shadows series.  It is my understanding, based on a Google search, that Collins wasn't even in the soap opera until a year into its run. / Source: Gawker.com

 The question remains, was the movie any good? Yes, and at the same time, not enough. Let me explain. Johnny Depp is his usual whacky and off-key self, though not as bad as in the Pirates of the Caribbean films (sometimes this was a good thing, sometimes not - see my review of the book The Republic of Pirates). The rest of the cast seemed to me to be just "phoning it in," for the most part. The aforementioned Helena Bonham Carter was good as always, but her role was so side-lined as to make the last frames of the movie seem rather oddly tacked on (spoiler: we see her eyes open in vampiric life at the bottom of the sea, seems she had been transfusing Barnabas's blood into herself so as to remain young and beautiful forever, and Collins decided to do away with her by having her tossed into the bay in chains). Ms. Pheiffer is good, but again, it is a bit phoned in to my ears. Then again, this isn't a film that demands Oscar-worthy performances, so I suppose for what it did amount to, Pheiffer and the rest did well enough. And anyway, this is more a movie about mood than it is about characterization, I think.

On mood, I think the filmmakers got the piece down pretty well. Having not seen the TV soap opera on which the film is based (a bit before my time, I'm afraid), I can only surmise that Barnabas Collins is a vampire with something of a conscience. This is how Depp plays him anyway. And yet at the same time, Collins is a true vampire. None of these touchy-feely sorts from modern vampiric mythos, if you catch my drift. The boys from The Vampire Diaries or Twilight would not feel comfortable in Collins's mansion, I'd say.

For instance, there is one particularly effective scene in which Barnabas sits with a group of hippies (this is the early 70s, after all) and, after having solicited their advice on matters of love, announces that he must - regrettably - now devour them for their precious blood. The scene was both funny in its execution and horrifying in its... well, execution. I get the impression that this was what the filmmakers were shooting for, and for the most part, Dark Shadows does it as planned.

According to an interview published online by Collider.com, Johnny Depp has wanted to play the role of Barnabas Collins for some time, and as a boy, he actually wanted to be Barnabas Collins. / Image Source: Tech.MIT.edu

On the other hand, there is a bit too much going on here, I think. As I said, the part of the story with the psychologist played by Helena Bonham Carter seems interesting, and at the same time, would not be missed too much if it had been completely exorcized from the movie. It feels very much like they were trying to touch on too many themes from the series. Not having seen the series, this is just supposition on my part, but I'd bet I'm not shooting silver bullets in the dark here (yes, I know that's Werewolves and not vampires, but we get one of those too, as I'd mentioned, so it still works, I'd say).

It really seems to me that the movie suffers from an abundance of material and not enough time to fit it into. Plus, we're trying to keep it close enough to the original material's ethos to avoid fans of that work from becoming irate. Are there truly "fanboys" of a 1960s TV soap opera? I can't say, but I'd imagine that there are. In the end, Dark Shadows feels rushed in places, tacked on in others, quite novel and engaging in spots, and downright chuckle-inducing in others. What we have is a hodge-podge of spooky stuff with some cringe-making moments (Angelique and Barnabas's sex scene, though it had the right period soundtrack, was still way over-the-top in this reviewer's opinion).

I'm sure I could go on about this film, but I'm going to start turning this bus into the station now, and so I won't. One last thing, to either put the coup de grâce on it, or beat that dead horse some more, depending on your point of view. The climactic scene in which Barnabas goes to face Angelique in the great hall of the mansion was almost entirely forgettable. It is as if the producers said to the director "you've still got lots of money in your budget, so put in a big fire and violence scene with people getting thrown this way and that and some CGI effects tossed in to really wow the audience." Myself, as audience, thought it worthy of a yawn, and not much more. Did we have to end the movie with a battle royale? Yes, it needed an ending, but it was so formulaic as to be rather pointless (besides the werewolf reveal, but that was only interesting because we didn't directly see it coming, and not because it added anything meaningful).


Alright, I've reached the moment where the review hits its crystallization point. As always, the question is what this film viewing experience was worth to me. In this case, I'm gonna say that it was priced just about right at the Redbox rate of buck and a quarter or so. I enjoyed Depp's role and found the sympathetic but still a monster portrayal of Barnabas Collins to be the film's highlight (with props given for having the guts to have it based in the early 1970s - it'd be even more ridiculous placed in 2012), but other than him, the film is almost straight-to-DVD fare.

So there you go, kiddies (yes, I've been watching re-runs of HBO's Tales from the Crypt, and it's starting to show). If you like Depp and you like vampires and other spooks and you like the 70s motif, you'll enjoy this well enough from the video store or Redbox. If none of those three things fits you, you're better off skipping it.

P.S. the best thing not included in the trailer (above) was Alice Cooper's cameo.  "Ugliest woman I've ever seen."  Nice.


The parting comment: 

Source: LolSnaps.com

To the test-giver: You asked, so you can't complain about the answer. Besides, as anyone who has listened to the radio or watched TV in the last 50 years knows, love is very subjective.  I'd say this is about as good a definition as you're going to get on the subject.  Kudos to the group Haddaway for crystallizing it into one verse of the chorus of a pop song.