Barnabas Collins returns to a drab manor

DARK SHADOWS (2012)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Perhaps it is high time that director Tim Burton abandon his gray misty-skies, Universal Monster backlot crossed with "Nightmare Before Christmas" atmosphere that he has only rarely abandoned ("Big Fish" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" seemed to have a more crisp Burton flair for the erratic and the unknown with a different palette of colors than anything of late). "Dark Shadows" is grayish and starkly lit visual porn - it is a sumptuous feast that could only occupy the world of the supernatural and, heck, Tim Burton does it best. As a movie, it also works in spades but it lacks that emotional punch that occupies some of Burton's finest films and it is wildly inconsistent from beginning to end.

Based on the soap opera vampire show of the early 1970's, Johnny Depp is Barnabas Collins, the elegant vampire of Collinswood Manor who was cursed by a devious, sexy and exceedingly menacing witch (Eva Green, in the performance of the movie). 200 years later, Barnabas emerges from a sealed tomb buried next to McDonalds and it is the early 1970's, not the 1700's. Barnabas returns to the manor, which is slowly eroding and a wreck with certains wings closed off, and plans to help the disbelieving Collins family with their once prosperous fishing business. Naturally, there is a competitor, Angelique, who tools around in a crimson red convertible and owns Angel Bay cannery, the stiff competitor for the Collins family.

There are some supporting players in the Collins family. There is the new prim and proper governess named Victoria (Bella Heathcote); Dr. Hoffman, the family shrink (Helena Bonham Carter with an orange hairdo); the family matriarch (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her brother, Brian (a curiously boring Jonny Lee Miller); Elizabeth's rebellious, Donovan Leitch-loving daughter, Carolyn (Chloe Moretz) who wants to run away to Manhattan, and there is the other child of the house, David (Gulliver McGrath), Brian's son.

"Dark Shadows" is lively and fun whenever Barnabas and Angelique torment, fight, discuss and make love to each other. The rest of the cast looks downbeat and rather drab, including Jackie Earle Haley as the manor's handyman. Michelle Pfeiffer can ignite a movie screen with her presence but here, she is misdirected to be so devoid of any tangible characteristics, you'll wonder if her character just had one too many stiff drinks.

The movie loses focus when it seems to center on the governess, then the Collins clan, then Barnabas and so on. Aside from Barnabas and Angelique, there is no character to latch onto, to have even the most remote empathy for. Burton and his writers also have an unwieldy screenplay that plays fast and loose with tone and near satire bordering on soap opera theatrics, and concludes with a finale that blends "Edward Scissorhands" with Burton's own "Batman" version sprinkled with a dose of werewolves, sculptures that are brought to life and a ghost (I do not recall any of this in the TV show of yesteryear but, who knows, my memory might be rusty). What begins as a Jane Austen horror fable turns into a minor monster pic, and then turns the tables into satire territory, before abandoning that completely and becoming a blood-soaked love story of spurned love and back into something else. A watchable picture and often deliciously fun (Johnny Depp is animated and engaging, partly contributing to the fun factor), but also a highly uneven picture.