User reviews

Oh the possibilities that were missed here. Except for the character names and a similar architecture in the house this film bares very little resemblance to DARK SHADOWS. The movie starts out beautifully and then goes off in so many awkward directions that it never finds what kind of movie it's trying to be. A few scattered laughs here and there do not compensate for a poorly conceived story that meanders itself to the point of being dull and confusing. What can you say about a movie that only comes to life in it's montages set to a pop songs from the early 1970's? Depp doesn't even attempt to capture any of the guilt ridden angst of Barnabas Collins. His Barnabas is a trick or treat Pirates of the Caribbean, very much like a kid playing dress up on Halloween and with two emotions, upset and more upset. Film has some nice set pieces but Burton doesn't bring any true Gothic feeling or sense of dread to the surroundings. The script has that throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks feel to it. Burtons direction comes off in a conveyor belt "okay, let's shoot this one" tone with interest only in visuals, which are striking. He's really more of a visual artist than he is a film director. Indeed, one gets the feeling that this film would never have been made if not for Johnny Depp and his love for the original series which is evident here. It's unfortunate that he relies too heavily on make up to carry his performance. Helean Bonham Carter has no interest in being in the film and it shows, doing it only as a favor to her husband. Eva Green is the type of actress Tim Burton is attracted to and loves to cast in his films, but she possesses little of Angelique's spellbinding jealousy. The only one in the cast that has a hint of what these surroundings should be played like is Michelle Pfeiffer. She is the Grande dame of Dark Shadows capturing both the Gothic feel of the original story and the magnificence of the character.

I saw every Tim Burton film since Mars Attacks! at the cinema. Until this came along. I had had enough of Burton's subpar efforts over the years and Alice In Wonderland was his last chance as far as I was concerned. Finally saw this and I'm glad I waited. This is simply awful. Based on a soap opera, Burton doesn't seem to know what to do. It changes tone dramatically from obvious humour involving Depp's character waking up after 200 years of being buried and being confused by things such as television. To grisly kills where he takes out innocent victims. There are a whole cast of characters, each one is given their own story, but none of them are given enough time to develop. Miller, Carter, Heathcote are all wasted as are their stories. I didn't even get the point of Miller, which is a shame because he was great with what he had. Entire scenes have no place in the film, or are needlessly long and repetitive. The main plot seems to have Eva Green asking Depp to be hers and him rejecting her, over and over and over again. It really does feel like snippets from a soap opera condensed down. This is really just a clip show. By the end it starts pulling things out of its backside. Couldn't care for anybody in this film and think the original property should have just been left alone.

I guess I will start out by saying that I am a huge Johnny Depp fan and that I even like some of Tim Burton's works (Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas). However, that being said, I did not like this film all that much. If you are looking for some comedy in this film, then go and watch the trailer, because most of the funny parts are in it. I understand that this film was supposed to be a spoof of the soap opera that appeared in the 1970's, but it really fell short of my expectations. I remember being in elementary school and rushing home to see what was happening on Dark Shadows. In this film, not only did I not want to see what happens next, I really didn't care. Johnny Depp (Barnabas Collins) once again embraced his character and does a really fine job of making the character believable, but the content just wasn't there. I don't think that this film ever decided what it wanted to be when it grew up. There were elements of comedy, horror, drama and even a little romance. There was some jostling around in this film between Barnabas and Angelique (Eva Green), but you could almost sense the wires that the actors were tied to. And is it just me or does Bella Heathcote (Victoria Winters/Josette DuPres) look a little like Anne Hathaway? Victoria and David Collins (Gulliver McGrath) gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "I see dead people". I guess my favorite character in the film was Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) who was Barnabas' sidekick. He was fun to watch even though he did not have many lines (thank goodness). This film may end up sucking the life out of your expectations. By the time you get to the end of the film, things get downright silly and stupid. The last ten minutes of the film I kept thinking to myself ….. oh brother. Also at the end of the film there was almost a hint of a sequel; man I sure hope not. Not all of the Depp/Burton collaborations have been successful and this is one of them. If you just want to see Johnny Depp on the big screen, then by old means go. However I think that this film should be locked in a box (redbox). As sure as my blood is red, so is the light for this film.

I'm a big time Burton fan, even have a tattoo of TNBC but this film is lame and I'm getting really really bored of the j depp and h b carter characters in EVERY single one of his films, both good actors but jeez cast some fresh faces Tim tired old relationships Alice, Charlie and the chocolate factory, corpse bride, dark shadow, Sweeney Todd feels a bit like watching an extended version of the same film except it gets more tedious and boring, will definitely not sit through this rubbish again!!!!!

only small saving grace is a fairly good performance by Chloe grace Moretz and a OK performance by Michelle Pfeifer, otherwise boring. the only thing this film offers that differs from the usual Tim Burton styling is less light and more shad, in most of his films there is an equal balance of bright colours (in corpse bride the underworld was colourful in image and in soul compared to the surface world where everything was grey!) Johhny Depp as Barnabus is dull as a vampire, overacted and far too much make up with far too much obvious confusion when he comes to the more modern world, no surprises and none of his his usual unexpected wit, the jokes are not funny and i think 4 year olds would be able to guess the plot as it unfolds!

I have never seen Dark Shadows the TV show so my despising of this movie isn't bias. I came into the cinema very open minded and with Johnny Depp being an actor I quite admire I was obviously fairly excited. However already 10 minutes in to the film I was painfully bored. Throughout the film I just felt like walking out as I sat there thinking of far better things I could be doing with my time; but i did stay just to say that I had experienced all of this dreadful film. First of all, the overall acting was poor, even from Johnny Depp. The script was equally as poor and very predictable. Why this movie is labelled as a comedy I do not know! I didn't laugh once! There was no character building and the love between Barnabas and Victoria was certainly not felt by the audience. You didn't feel for any character as everything was just so dry. As for the visuals it was all so predictable and yawn.

I think the Depp and Burton partnership is extremely over rated and Johnny should consider playing parts in far better films, as he obviously has the potential. As for Tim Burton, please retire.

This just showed up on Netflix so we watched it (we have been re-watching the original series and are up around episode 250).

Right off the bat the movie suffers from some horrible miscasting/character development. Carolyn and Roger being the most horrific mistakes. Carolyn doesn't work as a whiny early teen, she's a whiny early 20s. Stripping out Quentin and giving his traits to Carolyn with a toss away line pretty much sucked as well. Roger should be fabulously camp with the best snarky lines, delivered while snuggling up with the liquor cabinet, not a bland wallpaper villain rifling pocketbooks at a party. His whole character was just wrong.

Johnny Depp as Barnabas works up to a point. Though his sorta-sex scenes were pretty cringe and detracted rather than added to the story.

The early part of the movie starts out well but it really falls apart rather quickly. The conflict between Angelique and the Collins family (a la Burk Devlin) looked like it might have some teeth, but it stalls out with some lame set pieces. I'm a fan of Alice Cooper, but his inclusion just ate up time that could have been used for story telling.

By the end the whole thing is just creaking along feeling like it was looking for a place to stop. The big budget Hollywood treatment really strips away the shoestring budget charm the soap opera had.

I did like how Maggie and Vicky were merged. To me they were the most boring characters in the soap and mashing them together was a nice was of including them both.

I do not doubt the skills of Tim Burton nor his cast of characters, nevertheless I found this film to be very underwhelming. In his normal fashion, Johnny Depp pulled off another semi-creepy but lovable performance that somehow made this film a bit more bearable. The plot was very simplistic in design and a bit too underdeveloped to carry much weight. The other actors were good enough, but they were not important to the basic story. Only Johnny Depp was. As he always is. The jokes were stupid and felt as though they were lacking in the kind of taste normally associated with such films. The worst of it though was that the main character played by Depp, Barnabas Collins, was excused for his behavior as a vampire. It was OK that he was killing people left and right out of thirst. It wasn't frowned upon by the other characters, nor discouraged by the narrative. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I think it's a bit rude to go around sucking people's blood when you are thirsty. But that's just me apparently. There were also several appearances that didn't make sense in the film. Like Alice Cooper. Why was he there? Overall, this film was a bit confusing and disappointing in it's presentation. It could have been a comedic view of vampires if it didn't try so hard to be funny and dark at the same time. Sorry Tim, better luck next time. As a disclaimer, I've never really been a fan of his anyway.

I didn't really understand what was going on at the end, it felt like a series of gothic scenes that lead up to nothing, and for a fantasy/comedy, it wasn't very funny.

Could you imagine if Tim Burton cast Johnny Depp as Beetlejuice instead of Michael Keaton? The movie would not have even been close to being good. However thankfully Tim Burton cast perfectly and is still one of my favorite movies to date. Now why oh why doesn't Tim Burton look at his previous works and actually analyze what made them great so he can repeat? I can't believe that he actually "wants" to make bad movies. In contrast Johnny Depp was perfect for Edward scissor hands. Of course he was... Johnny Depp is a great actor, but even the greatest actors can't do every single character in every single movie. I mean, what if Tom Hanks or Robin Williams or Johnny Depp was cast as Beetlejuice? See my point? It would have sucked. Never having seen the original series, I had nothing to compare this movie too. It didn't have to "live up" to anything in my mind and yet it was still shallow and unimpressive. It wasn't really all that funny, some parts were but I didn't utter anything more than a forced chuckle. It really wasn't that dark because of the constant air of trying to be funny and charming but failing at that, which took away from the darkness. I was pretty disappointed. If Mr. Burton is going to use the same overall "gothic comedy" theme, and use the same talent over and over, well then he had better find some way to improve upon his past genius.

A movie that lacked so much direction that the original plot doesn't enter into until the last 2 minutes of the film. Tim Burton apparently had ideas for about seven other movies that wouldn't work on their own. He crams all of those ideas into this one movie, where they don't work anyway. In this film, once there is a plot point of any kind, it is either not discussed for 1/3rd of the movie, or it is immediately resolved that very scene, then we move on to yet another one. This movie has absolutely no focus what-so-ever. It doesn't know if it wants to be a comedy, horror, drama, or romance, so it decides to be one of those every other scene and it is just exhausting.

The Bella Heathcote is in the film for a total of five scenes of the movie, and she is in the first few scenes of the movie as the main focal point. Johnny Depp is the focal point for the majority of the film, and decides that he loves her for no other reason than meeting her once, and walking with her on the beach once. This movie has no build up on any front, and decides to hit it out of the park without even battering up.

Dark Shadows has no audience. It's one thing to reach a demographic, but be good enough for others, but it's another thing to reach absolutely no audience at all because of how vague the plot is, and how childish/adult oriented the movie turns out to be.

There are some genuinely funny moments, and the movie has shown promise more than once through out, but these moments of glee are interrupted by large portions of sporadic jumps across the screen. There are times when we truly feel for Johnny Depp's character, and his overacting is actually humanizing to a degree of someone who was a fish out of water or a man out of his own time. Yet he still murders innocent people and handles his problems so blatantly bad that the sympathy for him is limited down to nearly nothing.

It's a mystery of how Tim Burton wanted to play this film out in the first place. He obviously had some good ideas, but every single idea that is brought to the screen is soon wiped off in order for another to take its place. Then there comes the third act, where we are treated to the most uncalled-for horror-fest money can buy. Remember when I said there was no build up to this movie? The third act was the prime example. All of the sudden we are shown things that had absolutely no build up to it anywhere throughout the film. They are just brought to the screen and we are supposed to accept them, and after being beaten with so many random plot points, you feel like you've ran a marathon, and the movie ends with very little to recollect.

This film is not worth the time nor the effort to attempt to watch. It paints an obvious picture of how hard times have fell on a formerly great director, and why it may be time for him to hang up his director's chair for good. Do not give this film the time of day unless you are just such a die-hard Johnny Depp fan that you want to see everything of his in the first place. Either way, you have been warned.

Dark Shadows tries with all its might to be as quirky, spooky and ironic as possible. But I couldn't agree more with what most of the critics have said, and I quote, "All dressed up, and nowhere to go". To be honest, I thought that this was going to be one of Burton's most original outings since the mid-nineties. I was looking forward to the juxtaposition of groovy nostalgia and Universal classic horror movie monsters that this film promised. But once I pressed play, those hopes were quickly dashed. Its another pretentious Burton schlock-fest with over the top weirdness, over bearing set pieces, uninteresting dialog and of course, Johnny Depp stinking up the joint. I should have known that Dark Shadows was such an appealing franchise for Burton to get his greasy hands on. Nothing in this film is genuinely compelling or funny. However, the homages to the 70's (as little in quantity as they were), were at least semi- amusing. Tim needs to learn at some point or another that his 20 year Depp collabo is wearing extremely thin. Perhaps the film's box-office returns gave some sort of a clue.

LOGLINE: In the 1770's the wealthy Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is cursed to spend eternity as a vampire by his lovesick servant and secret witch, Angelique (Eva Green). Upon discovery of his new affliction Collins is buried alive by the townspeople, and spends nearly two centuries underground until he is accidentally dug up by the construction crew building a new restaurant called McDonald's. Collins discovers times have changed as his family heirs are struggling to get by and the witch is now the most powerful and popular woman in town.

Yes…this is the actual premise that some Hollywood jerkoff thought would be a great movie to throw millions of dollars at to get made. Dark Shadows, based on the marginal late 60's/early 70's Gothic soap opera, is basically the story of what happens to a 18th century vampire who wakes up in the 1970's after a 200-year sleep. Jokes about all things the 70's decade had to offer are constantly thrown at the audience and the gag runs thin…very quickly.

The all-star cast struggles to find their footing, and the story plot is underdeveloped and pushed to the side to make way for the generic jokes that don't stick. Tim Burton seems to phone this one in. Burton's directorial detail and effort of his past classics such as Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands are nowhere to be found in this one, but I guess that should be expected from a guy who made boring movies out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.

Dark Shadows is a misfire and a perfect example of how confused Hollywood currently is. When the mass audience already has a bloated belly full of vampire stories why trot out another movie that strips the genre of its essence and excitement? Maybe this will be the holy water or silver dagger that will be shanked through the heart of the current vampire trend and put us out of our misery. One can only hope.

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Definition of Moribund: "In terminal decline; lacking vitality or vigor." That's this movie. Don't believe the trailers -- they made it look very witty and fast-paced. Instead it is slow and dull.

Why don't they get the people who make the trailers to make the movie? Trailers are always fast-paced and funny and make the movies look terrific. I think there are jokes in the trailers that are not IN this movie! Why would you remove jokes from a movie that has too few?

Johnny Depp tries his hardest, as he always does. But the script is just flat. Sad to see that Tim Burton has demoted his girlfriend, Helena Bonham Carter, to "older character lady" role. Women in their 20s get the romantic leads. (Is Johnny not aging?)

Also story steals a bit from Twilight. So we've seen it all before.

I really like the original Dark Shadows TV series; it's got a nice eerie feeling and it was satisfyingly complicated. I didn't, however, catch the early '90s version or the 2005 TV movie, so when I heard that Tim Burton was going to be remaking it for the big screen, I was quite excited. The material seemed right up his street. There was no way, I thought, that this could be anything other than excellent. Oh, how wrong I was!

While a lot of the blame for how bad the movie turned out to be must be laid at the feet of Seth Grahame-Smith - and I'll go into why in a minute - there are some creative decisions that were surely other people's, or that people didn't question at the script level that just don't make sense.

In fact, this movie's main problem, I think, is that logic packed its bags and went on holiday during production.

You can make the world you create as a movie-making team with whatever logic you like, but, if your world doesn't operate according to the real world or by logic set out by similar worlds and characters in past works, you must explain that, or the audience must, and will, use their frames of reference. I might be looking into all of this too deeply, and the leaps in logic, inaccuracies and nonsensical stuff here might just be oversights, but there are too many of them for that to be the case.

But, then again, they must just be oversights and examples of shoddy writing, or else they would be explained. If I could have just turned my brain off, not thought and not listened to dialogue or not paid attention to the many, many illogical and nonsensical things in this movie, I might have enjoyed it more than I did. I doubt it, though; it's got Johnny Depp in it, who has definitely lost that certain something that made him a great actor.

I love the story writing and concepts, and even the idea behind it being dryly funny, but Burton is clearly struggling with control. Too square to be subversive and too lame to be funny, it's a fish-out-of-water macabre-comedy that's as pale as a man who sleeps in a coffin when compared to much better films (What We Do in the Shadows). A decent climax, nice gothic visuals, and Eva Green giving her all still can't bring life to this thing.