Dark Shadows — A Retrospect0

Written by Nishanthini Ganesan

The long-awaited film Dark Shadows was finally released in Singapore on the 10^th of May, 2012. Based on the 1967 American gothic cult series, Dark Shadows, cre­ated by Dan Curtis, this film is another Tim Burton-Johnny Depp col­lab­o­ra­tion, also star­ring Helena Bonham Carter. Sadly though, unlike many oth­ers, Dark Shadows does not do too well.

Many fans of clas­sic Tim Burton films might be a tad unset­tled by how the plot of this film unfolds. When Barnabus Collin’s back­story is told at the begin­ning in clas­sic Tim Burton narrative-style, we assume that he will be the main char­ac­ter. We would prob­a­bly have assumed the same from the place­ment of the char­ac­ters in the pro­mo­tional posters. Therefore we believe the story will be told through his eyes. As the movie tran­si­tions to present day how­ever, we begin to watch the plot unfold through the expe­ri­ences of the new gov­erness to the Collins chil­dren, Victoria. When Barnabus Collins gets dug up again, we return to telling the story in an objec­tive point of view through his expe­ri­ences. Victoria also dis­ap­pears for a large part of the remain­der of the film, and dur­ing the climax. 

Barnabus Collins him­self, as a char­ac­ter, is by no means a tragic hero. In fact, I must admit that I didn’t like him much for break­ing Angelique’s heart in the first place. The fail­ure of the main char­ac­ter to draw feel­ings from the audi­ence is one rea­son why the movie as a whole, failed to impress. Why we do not sym­pa­thize enough with Barnabus is due to the fact that we do not see his char­ac­ter respond to the tribu­la­tions he was thrown under by the witch Angelique. We adore him, love him even for his awk­ward­ness, but we fail to under­stand his pain because we are not brought deep enough into his psy­che and that I feel, is the great­est fault in this film. There was no char­ac­ter who went on a jour­ney and found the answer to their trou­bles, or an end­ing to their pain. There was only a vam­pire with a strong set of val­ues that were empha­sized time and time again in the film. It is a noble act to make a film to show­case the impor­tance of a fil­ial piety, but I felt that many ele­ments that should have been present in the film to were miss­ing. Many a time, spo­ken dia­logue took the place of what should have been por­trayed by action instead.

The cli­max of the movie, the fight scene between the Collins and Angelique, was noth­ing more than a con­fus­ing bat­tle of strange crea­tures. There was a strange twist at the end that felt more like a joke thrown in for humor’s sake. Overall, the end­ing failed to pro­duce any sense of Karthasis. The uplift­ing sense of drama and emo­tional spec­ta­cle that we have come to love, and unfor­tu­nately expect, from Tim Burton was present, but it came across on screen as a mere mess. I would even go as far as to say that the sex scene between Angelique and Barnabus pro­cured more excite­ment from the audi­ence that the sup­posed cli­max itself.

There were also sev­eral cre­ative deci­sions made with regard to the sto­ry­line that did not work well with me.

There will be impor­tant infor­ma­tion on the plot of Dark Shadows in the fol­low­ing para­graph and there­fore I advise reader discretion.

I will use the mur­der of Helena Bonham Carter’s char­ac­ter, Dr. Julia Hoffman, by Barnabus Collins as an exam­ple. The mur­der did noth­ing for the plot, besides giv­ing a rea­son for Angelique to hand Barnabus over to the police. Even then, she could have done it as eas­ily with his con­fes­sion regard­ing his killing of the con­struc­tion work­ers. The mur­der of Dr. Hoffman had lit­tle to no effect on the other mem­bers of the Collins fam­ily that I would rather it had never hap­pened at all. That being said, the char­ac­ter of Dr. Hoffman in the film did not come off strongly either. I trust Helena Bonham Carter’s act­ing skills, and there­fore I will not spec­u­late as to the cause, whether it be the script itself, or the por­trayal of the character.

However, it can­not be said that this film isn’t visu­ally stun­ning. It show­cases the clas­sic dark, gloomy, German Expressionist style that many have come to asso­ciate with the mas­ter direc­tor him­self. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy and light­ing were spot on and the scene of Barnabus Collins and Victoria tak­ing a walk by the sea is a per­fect exam­ple of the strange­ness yet pro­pri­ety of Tim Burton’s use of the mobile cam­era in track­ing odd movements.

The cos­tumes, done by acclaimed cos­tume designer Colleen Atwood, must be given spe­cial men­tion to. It would take a long time for an audi­ence mem­ber to for­get the neck­lace Barnabus wore for a large part of the film. However, one could not help but to notice how droopy Angelique’s breasts looked in the famed red dress she wore to the hap­pen­ing, in con­trast to how they looked in the pro­mo­tional posters and in her other ensembles.

The makeup in the film, specif­i­cally on Barnabus Collins, felt care­lessly done to me. We are accus­tomed to see­ing Johnny Depp’s cheeks made hol­low with the use of makeup. It has been done in many Tim Burton films, includ­ing Edward Scissorhands, to give him the skele­tal look that many, specif­i­cally women, have come to love. However the dif­fer­ence between their pres­ence in Edward Scissorhands and Dark Shadows, is how obvi­ous the attempted exag­ger­a­tion of Johnny Depp’s fea­tures appear on screen. Even the use of hair prod­uct on his hair was painfully appar­ent in some shots, mak­ing it look arti­fi­cial and I sim­ply can­not pass this off as a cre­ative decision.

As a Tim Burton fan, it does pain me ter­ri­bly to write this review as Tim Burton is by no means a bad direc­tor, but one must, iron­i­cally, look at the bright side. If Tim Burton goes past the dis­mal Dark Shadows and goes on to make another good film, I feel that it would strengthen his posi­tion as one of the reign­ing direc­tors in Hollywood. Even great direc­tors like Stanley Kubrick had films that were by no means, crit­i­cal suc­cesses. They were by no means proud of them, and nei­ther were their fans. What I will be proud of how­ever, is the tiny legion of Tim Burton fans who will stand by their hero even after watch­ing this film.

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If you have been hid­ing under a Dark Shadow, you may find the trailer to the film here.