Dark Shadows

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Does anyone really give a shit anymore? And by anyone I mean those that don't worship at the altar of whatever banal, gothic piece of crap Tim Burton and Johnny Depp churn out. Once again, this is quirk for quirk's sake and is neither particularly funny, scary or anything resembling entertaining. Both these guys are obviously talented, which makes productions as subpar as this all the more criminal.

Depp is Barnabas Collins, a vampire cursed by Eva Green's heartbroken, but dastardly witch and buried alive for a couple of centuries. Waking up in 1972 and chowing down (somewhat comically) on anyone that isn't a family member, he soon finds his old mansion is now occupied by a group of relatives - including Michelle Pfeiffer's jaded but wily head of the family. Naturally enough, Green's bitchy witch has not bought the farm and is still alive and well running a successful fishing company - a business that the Collins clan used to thrive in. If there's a plot in there somewhere, then Burton stumbled across it accidently, Christopher Columbus style.

Ostensibly this appeared to be a return to the Beetlejuice type of production that Burton once excelled at. Somewhat gothic, the characters and comedy are what shone through there, as they did in (probably his best film) Ed Wood. Burton once again gets too caught up in the familiar; Depp does his now customary British accent; the missus, Bonham Carter turns up in a nothing role while everything has a bang of 'quirky on just the right side of broad' about it. The comedic moments aren’t consistent, the pseudo horror scenes half-arsed and the performances all suffer as a consequence.

Listen, Burton's hardcore fanbase will turn out for this no matter what. But the man has grown increasingly lazy over the years, because the tired muck he was churning out kept making serious coin at the box-office - especially when he worked with Depp. It's getting to the point that although brazenly different on paper, his productions will become difficult to differentiate from one another. If one positive thing comes out Dark Shadows it's that Pfeiffer is still a strikingly beautiful woman with charisma to spare. Give her more roles, Hollywood.

Middle-of-the-road, plotless shite. Both Depp and Burton's agents need to sit them down and slap them with a good, contemporary script until they agree to make it properly.