Dark Shadows (2012)
Directed by Tim Burton
Vampire Barnabas Collins is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate and family have fallen into ruin.
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With rare exceptions, Tim Burton’s movies in the past decade have involved existing properties given the Tim Burton polish, with the veteran filmmaker adding his goth-cute aesthetic on top of familiar source material like Planet of the Apes , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland .
In addition to being his eighth collaboration with his cinematic muse Johnny Depp (“Ed Wood,” “Sleepy Hollow”), the film also re-teams him with his real-life partner Helena Bonham Carter (“Sweeney Todd,” “Alice in Wonderland”), his longtime composer Danny Elfman (“Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”) and his decade-long producer Richard Zanuck (“Planet of the Apes,” “Big Fish”).
It is beautifully sculpted, staged and shaded in ways reminiscent of his version of "Sweeney Todd," albeit with less attention to detail and zero surprises.
After a dockside Liverpool opening that makes it look like Burton is still making Sweeney Todd, a five-minute prologue tells the tale of the Collins family's voyage to America, their establishment of a fishing empire in Maine and heir Barnabas' tragic love for the exquisite Josette (Bella Heathcote).
With a look that takes its inspiration from equal parts "Edward Scissorhands" and F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu," Depp once again affects the chalky pallor that has become something of a signature throughout his eight-movie collaboration with Burton.
A running gag in which Barnabas can’t pick up anything with his long fingernails amuses, until it reminds you of “Edward Scissorhands” — and has you wondering why Burton and Depp seem content to repeat themselves, degenerating into self-parody.
His darkened eye sockets and waxy white skin might evoke memories of the first Depp-Burton collaboration, Edward Scissorhands (1990), but while that bittersweet film generated both laughs and real sentiment with its quirky view of Gothic tropes and suburban malaise, Dark Shadows strains for both and never quite achieves either.
This is no surprise: Rick Heinrichs won his Oscar for his brilliant set design on Burton's Sleepy Hollow, while Colleen Atwood won one of hers for her elaborate costumes for Burton's Alice in Wonderland (and received additional nods for his Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow).
His other Gothic epic, Sleepy Hollow, had some great laughs.
I think the best use of Depp in a Burton world was " Sleepy Hollow " (1999).
Though the gothic production design is quintessential Burton, and the blend of horror and comedy promises to harken back to Beetlejuice, the overall effect for me is closer to Burton’s Planet of the Apes than anything else, in that neither film seems to know what it wants to be when it grows up.
Save for his magnum opus of the new millennium, 2007's marvelously ghastly musical " Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ," this is director Tim Burton's most inspired effort in years, more genuinely recollective of the originality and entertaining quirkiness of 1988's "Beetlejuice" and 1990's "Edward Scissorhands" rather than more recent plasticized efforts like 2005's " Charlie and the Chocolate Factory " and 2010's " Alice in Wonderland ."
Burton chooses a lower-key approach, in the vein of his earlier films like Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands.
Such a set-up and the presence of ghosts will likely remind some viewers (and especially Burton fans) of the filmmaker's 1980s horror-comedy "Beetlejuice."
“Dark Shadows” feels like a throwback for Burton with a handful of visual references to his early work like “Batman,” “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Mars Attacks!”
On the other hand, Burton's Alice in Wonderland grossed a billion dollars worldwide, and Johnny Depp in heavy makeup can be a formidable box-office threat.
Also, big things are now expected from the notoriously quirky Burton after his previous feature, Alice in Wonderland , became a bona fide blockbuster (Burton's second highest grossing film when adjusted for inflation, after Batman ).
And, while Dark Shadows takes enormous liberties with the source material, it doesn’t warp it into something unrecognizable to its admirers, as Burton’s Alice in Wonderland did.
Dark Shadows isn’t as dull as Alice in Wonderland or as inert as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but this one hurts more than those did because the potential was so great.
It does look great, though; Burton is supremely comfortable doing this sort of thing, but after Alice in Wonderland and this, one can’t help but wish that he’d step outside his comfort zone just a little on the next project.
If the atrocious "Alice in Wonderland" represented a couple in a rut, "Dark Shadows" is a resurrection.
Re-teaming with his old collaborator, production designer Rick Heinrichs, proves to be a great move for Burton and the look of the film evokes the best parts of Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands and Mars Attacks!
Most of his films come from pop-culture icons - Batman , Mars Attacks! , Planet of the Apes - or classic books that appeal to his surrealist sensibilities, such as Alice in Wonderland .
“Dark Shadows” feels like a throwback for Burton with a handful of visual references to his early work like “Batman,” “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Mars Attacks!”
The director of Batman (1989), Mars Attacks! (1996), Planet of the Apes (2001), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) has now gotten his hands on Dark Shadows, the supernatural soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to '71.
It's clear, though, that Frankenweenie benefits substantially from Tim Burton's expectedly larger-than-life approach to the material, as the director has infused the proceedings with a broad and decidedly gothic sensibility that's more in line with his earlier efforts (Edward Scissorhands, Batman) than with his newer, comparatively garish output (Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows).
Ever since Burton successfully rebooted the Batman franchise, he has attempted time and again to use that midas touch of his on varied well established works.
In addition to being his eighth collaboration with his cinematic muse Johnny Depp (“Ed Wood,” “Sleepy Hollow”), the film also re-teams him with his real-life partner Helena Bonham Carter (“Sweeney Todd,” “Alice in Wonderland”), his longtime composer Danny Elfman (“Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”) and his decade-long producer Richard Zanuck (“Planet of the Apes,” “Big Fish”).
In the midst of all this is an unusually dandy bit of dress-up from Depp, weaving his elongated Nosferatu fingers through the air, recalling an exchange in 1994's Ed Wood .
By the time Dark Shadows gets to the opening credits, it is already Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood, but then I've always had a soft spot for the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin."
With rare exceptions, Tim Burton’s movies in the past decade have involved existing properties given the Tim Burton polish, with the veteran filmmaker adding his goth-cute aesthetic on top of familiar source material like Planet of the Apes , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland .
Depp, who was so annoying in Alice and Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Burton’s worst films if you take Planet of the Apes out of the picture) is no less affected in his performance here, but for some reason it just works.
But consider that in the 1990s, Burton made Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow ; in the 2000s, he made Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .
The director of Batman (1989), Mars Attacks! (1996), Planet of the Apes (2001), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) has now gotten his hands on Dark Shadows, the supernatural soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to '71.
That distinctive gothic flair, freed from horror and animated by comedy in great films like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice , has not gone away, nor has his attraction to stories about imaginative outcasts misunderstood by the squares around them.
With stronger material, Burton's films are capable of great verbal wit ( Pee-wee's Big Adventure , Beetlejuice , Ed Wood ), but Dark Shadows was more suited to a purely visual treatment.
But consider that in the 1990s, Burton made Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow ; in the 2000s, he made Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .
Pfeiffer seems to be having almost as much fun as she did as Catwoman in Burton’s “Batman Returns,” and fans will appreciate the cameos and quotations, the smoking at the dinner table and the visit to the show’s Blue Whale Tavern, where Barnabas puts the whammy on a recalcitrant sea captain played by Christopher Lee.
Burton, in his eighth collaboration with Depp, signed on as director; and Pfeiffer, who was the majestic-pathetic Catwoman in Burton’s 1992 Batman Returns, plays Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, doyenne of the cursed Collinwood estate.
Green vamps it up, delivering a salacious performance that's a malevolent cross between Anne Hathaway's nutty White Queen in Alice and Michelle Pfeiffer's sexually empowered Catwoman in Batman Returns.
While it doesn’t come close to early 1990s masterpieces such as Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood , it is Burton’s most perverse film since Batman Returns and his most playful since Mars Attacks!
In addition to being his eighth collaboration with his cinematic muse Johnny Depp (“Ed Wood,” “Sleepy Hollow”), the film also re-teams him with his real-life partner Helena Bonham Carter (“Sweeney Todd,” “Alice in Wonderland”), his longtime composer Danny Elfman (“Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”) and his decade-long producer Richard Zanuck (“Planet of the Apes,” “Big Fish”).
You’d have to go all the way back to Big Fish, or perhaps even 1999’s Sleepy Hollow to find anything comparable in quality.
Whilst not quite the triumph we might have been hoping for, this lushly produced gothic comedy is director Tim Burton’s best film since 2003’s Big Fish.
Two screenwriters are credited: John August, who worked on Burton’s Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride, and his replacement, Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the mashup novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (the movie version of which will open next month).
Apart from the Addams Family feel, find nods to Hammer horror (a cameo by Christopher Lee included), typically glib period source music ("Knights in White Satin," "Season of the Witch"), and a climax that evokes Death Becomes Her.
Troll dolls!), climaxing with a CGI-fueled confrontation between the blondes in the Collinwood foyer that revives unwelcome memories of Robert Zemeckis’ “Death Becomes Her.”
At one point, it even appears to emulate that macabre 1992 comedy “Death Becomes Her.”
Up until an f/x-laden climax that desperately conjures everything from "Rebecca" to "Death Becomes Her," Depp just about holds it all together, unsurprisingly emerging as the pic's most reliable element.
About their battle: It manifests itself in a special-effects showcase that needs the feather-light touch of “Death Becomes Her,” not the tromping stampede of “Jumanji.”
When she and Depp are together, the movie comes close to generating sparks — though their room-devastating tryst doesn't match Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson's furniture-breaking boff in 1989's The Tall Guy.
There's an energetic sex scene (accompanied by a Barry White song) that recalls a similarly destructive and acrobatic sequence from The Tall Guy, although Dark Shadows' PG-13 rating demands that it be toned down.
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There’s more interest in fidelity to the original cast’s hair color than to the character of Barnabas Collins, who is neither the guilt-ridden loner of the TV series nor the bloodsucking savage of Curtis’ 1970 feature film “House of Dark Shadows.”
With a look that takes its inspiration from equal parts "Edward Scissorhands" and F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu," Depp once again affects the chalky pallor that has become something of a signature throughout his eight-movie collaboration with Burton.
A lot of this is due to Depp’s performance, which is comparatively restrained and relies a lot on Burton making him resemble Count Orlok in Nosferatu with a strange haircut.
As he roams the halls of Collinwood mansion, gloomily clutching a lace hanky, Depp sometimes evokes Tim Curry as the transsexual mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (not that his performance, or this movie, achieves that level of camp sublimity).
The whiplash-inducing shifts in tone cause Dark Shadows to veer from hardcore Hammer horror to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and back again.
More frequently, this Dark Shadows relies on slow-pitch wasn't-the-past-dumb humor: The 1970s are lampooned for macramé art and inane pothead conversation, Love Story and lava lamps and the Steve Miller Band .
The jokes are easy pickings, but they score anyway, thanks to Depp’s befuddlement in the face of a McDonald’s sign or a troll doll, his assessments of everything from Scooby Doo (“This is a very silly play”) to Love Story , and his peculiar ideas about love and the essentiality of dowries and “birthing hips.”
Most humiliatingly, he is reduced to reading Love Story.
The central joke of the picture — that long-buried Barnabas awakens from his 200-year hiatus to find himself in the strange new world of 1972 — is good for a few bits, as when Barnabas is seen devouring a hardback edition of "Love Story."
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In fact, it seems less like a remake of the TV soap than the 1979 Dracula spoof Love at First Bite.
Maybe you never saw Love At First Bite or The Brady Bunch Movie (it seems like Tim Burton didn't bother to watch them either -- or maybe he watched them too much and decided to make his own versions).
The great Martin Scorsese has described the appeal of Bava (whose films include classics such as " Black Sunday " and " Kill, Baby, Kill ") thusly: "Hardly any story, just atmosphere, with all that fog and ladies walking down corridors; a kind of Italian gothic."