Dark Shadows
MPAA Rating: PG-13In Theaters: May 11th, 2012
Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes (113 minutes)
Rated PG-13 for comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking.
Its
A
Mess!
Watch
It
For
Depp.
Dark Shadows Review
- What's Good:
- Johnny Depp's Performance, The VFX (Visual Effects) in the movie are appreciable.
- What's Bad:
- In-consistent flow of the movie, Lack of direction and screenplay.
- Verdict:
- This movie is far thin and low compared to other Johnny Depp movies.
- Watch or Not:
- Watch it for Depp, If you're a serious Depp Fan. Don't forget it came with a word of caution.
Audience Ratings for Dark Shadows
Plot Summary
In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet--or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas 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 has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles. Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Moretz); and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Haley, and David's new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.
Critics Reviews for Dark Shadows
38 Critics like this movie.
Reviews Counted: 42 | Positive Review: 16 | Negative Review: 26 | Average Rating: 2.8/5"Dark Shadows" isn't among Mr. Burton's most richly realized works, but it's very enjoyable, visually sumptuous and, despite its lugubrious source material and a sporadic tremor of violence, surprisingly effervescent.
Critic Score: 4/5
Dark Shadows is a mess, and it's unclear whether its bizarre recipe of comedy, campy horror, and gothic melodrama will satisfy anyone, regardless of their familiarity with the source material.
Critic Score: 2/4
In a time when even the most accomplished genre movies have the fingerprints of focus group-happy execs all over them, the relatively unmitigated quirk of Dark Shadows is worth celebrating.
Critic Score: 4/5
Bipolar film that's equal parts comedy and horror show, with neither element particularly effective.
Critic Score: 2/5
Stumbles blindly along with Barnabas for most of its overlong 113 minutes, leaving viewers in the dark as to its intentions.
Critic Score: 1/4
Burton's visuals are a sumptuous treat, as is Depp's unerring sense of mischief - but, after a fierce and funny start, Dark Shadows simply spins its wheels.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
Burton's offbeat montages are amusing, but the story's slow start and overblown conclusion make Dark Shadows half a good movie.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
This is not so much a coherent movie as it is a long, expensive joke in search of a purpose.
Mostly Dark Shadows is silly when we're trained to expect slightly richer fun from Burton and Depp.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
Fans of Depp's past collusions with Burton will find their rewards along the way. But there's a perfunctory vibe to the goings on, a weariness amid the weirdness.
Clearly, they made the movie they wanted to make. It's just not the movie this "Dark Shadows" fan hoped to see.
Critic Score: 2/4
Dark Shadows' only meaningful relationship is between Depp and his audience. He's a persona now, no longer an actor.
Critic Score: 2/4
How bad is "Dark Shadows"? It makes you long for a "Twilight" movie. That's bad.
Critic Score: D+
"Dark Shadows'' certainly has its moments, especially when Barnabas and Angelique hilariously wreck her office during a surreal, CGI-fueled, PG-rated tryst.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
At once a brash, strutting pop culture pastiche and gloomy exercise in self-cannibalizing nostalgia, "Dark Shadows" is depressing on myriad levels.
Critic Score: 1.5/4
Can't decide whether it's a parody, a horror comedy, an atmospheric melodrama, or a tedious bucket of crap. Eventually it chooses the last one.
Critic Score: D
When you consider all the pitfalls avoided, and all the laughs and pleasures it provides along the way, "Dark Shadows" is a satisfying and skillful effort.
Critic Score: 3/4
Burton's offbeat montages are amusing, but the story's slow start and overblown conclusion make Dark Shadows half a good movie.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
An uncertain combination of elements that unsuccessfully tries to be half-scary, half-funny and all strange...
Critic Score: 2.5/5
"Dark Shadows" is amusing, in fits and spurts, and sure to make tons of money, but terribly familiar and fatigued.
[Burton] and Depp, both avowed childhood fans of the original series, seem to be in their element and having a grand old time.
Handsome, vaguely true to the old soap opera, and inert.
"Dark Shadows" opens promisingly, downshifts after 30 minutes, and sputters into a meandering, momentum-free mess.
Critic Score: 2/4
The script by Seth Grahame-Smith is witless and meandering - and I wouldn't mind the witless so much if it moved, or the meandering if it were droll.
The film's biggest disappointment is the utter lack of chemistry between Depp and either Green or Heathcote.
Critic Score: C-
Whether it works is a matter of taste, but the fact that Burton's revisit unearths enough fun while feeling like four films in one is testament to the source's seductive bloodline.
Critic Score: 3/5
"Dark Shadows" doesn't add anything new to the genre, but it's a surprisingly high-spirited and genuinely black-humored comedy.
Critic Score: 3/4
A nutty romp that's as much about celebrating a significant blip in the pop-cult continuum as it is a tale of bloodsucking, of grudge-holding, and the stress involved in maintaining a 200-room, two-century-old house.
Critic Score: 3/4
Tim Burton is like a billionaire fanboy who buys Bela Lugosi's Dracula cape: he has a perfect right to it, but that doesn't mean it looks good on him.
Tim Burton has got his groove back.
Critic Score: 3/4
Attention must be paid to movie allure, in a star like Depp and his current harem.
"Dark Shadows" offers potent atmosphere and delirious '70s fashions and hilarious gags and some really terrific performances, none better than Pfeiffer's triumphant return to the screen as a pitch-perfect family matriarch.
"Dark Shadows" illustrates the fine line in a pop reboot between "relaxed" and "lazy."
Critic Score: 2/4
It offers wonderful things, but they aren't what's important. It's as if Burton directed at arm's length, unwilling to find juice in the story.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
"Shadows" leaves us with the sense that this isn't the last time we'll be seeing Barnabas and company. One can only hope that next time they'll work out the kinks.
Critic Score: 2/4
Dark Shadows, a kinky love triangle, is true, in its fashion, to the spirit of the old soap opera. Yet its real love affair is between Johnny Depp and the audience who's still hooked on seeing him get his freak on.
Critic Score: B+
All dressed up and no place to go.
Critic Score: 2/5
The cheesy and cheap but beloved TV program takes an affectionate ribbing in the film, which has more in common with "That '70s Show" than its actual source.
Critic Score: 3/4
Dark Shadows sinks its teeth half-way into its potentially meaty material but hesitates to go all the way.
Less a resurrection than a clumsy desecration.
The film itself takes awhile to get going as it establishes all those characters and back stories. Once there, it seems to have nowhere to go -- out of the shadows or into the light, it doesn't really matter either way.
Few director-star partnerships are as consistently eccentric or malleable as that of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, but even loyalists will detect an odor of mothballs clinging to their eighth bigscreen collaboration.
Your Reaction to Dark Shadows ?
Credits
©2012 Warner Bros. Pictures
Dark Shadows Photos
-
Bella Heathcote - Dark Shadows Premiere in London - 9th May, 2012
-
Eva Green - 'Dark Shadows' London Premiere - 9th May, 2012
-
Michelle Pfeiffer - 'Dark Shadows' London Premiere - 9th May, 2012
-
Michelle Pfeiffer - Dark Shadows Premiere in Los Angeles - 7th May, 2012
-
Bella Heathcote - Dark Shadows Premiere in Los Angeles - 7th May, 2012
-
Eva Green - Dark Shadows Premiere in Los Angeles - 7th May, 2012
-
Alison Lohman - Dark Shadows Premiere in Los Angeles - 7th May, 2012