Written by James M. Tate / 5/11/2012 / No comments / 2012 , comedy , dan curtis , eva green , horror , johnny depp , lara parker , michelle pheiffer , tim burton
DEPP & BURTON REMAKE DARK SHADOWS
2013 rating: ** |
The continuous gag of the newly awakened vamp’s dazed fascination with modern devices – from a television to a lava lamp – gets pretty tiresome. After the intriguing and rather spooky prologue followed by an ultraviolent massacre of those who awakened him, one might expect a more lethal antihero. And God knows Depp, lavishing the accent and prowess with his usual wily charm, deserves a darker ride. Playing a character that one-minute slaughters the innocent and the next is a lovable klutz, he seems a bit lost and incomplete. And director Tim Burton, a pioneer of mixing horror and comedy, is never quite sure which way to lean at the right moments.
Although our cunning antagonist Angelique Bouchard tries her best to sharpen those fangs with sexually driven rampage, this film remains a cartoon. Collins family members including Michelle Pfeiffer as the mansion mom and ChloĂ« Grace Moretzas a mopey teen daughter (with a dark secret of her own) add only filler dialog to the proceedings. While the lovely Bella Heathcote, as Barnabus’s love interest from both time periods and the character we follow into the modern story, is all but forgotten not long after the opening credits. And despite the abundance of murky downtime, the finale, as the family bands together to protect their home, is, like the prologue, quite entertaining. But mostly we have two neat looking bookends holding a dusty novel with empty pages.
Labels:
2012,
comedy,
dan curtis,
eva green,
horror,
johnny depp,
lara parker,
michelle pheiffer,
tim burton
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