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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What critics say influenced Dark Shadows
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”).
Ergüven is quick to point out her mythical sources, including allusions to the Minotaur, the labyrinth and the five-headed Lernaean Hydra, and her avowed cinematic influences run farther afield than merely Sofia Coppola, including Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers,” the men-in-captivity tales of Bresson’s “A Man Escaped” and Don Siegel’s “Escape From Alcatraz,” as well as Pasolini’s “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” which Ergüven calls “the story of society grappling with fascism through the prism of a sordid tale.”
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.
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.”
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).
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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.
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.”
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.
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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.