If you’ve never seen the original “Dark Shadows”, it’s actually worth catching on Netflix, if for no other reason than to see what would happen if Hammer Films were forced to make a soap opera on a tiny, tiny budget. Despite that, there are actually some pretty good moments in it, and if nothing else, it’ll cheerfully go completely insane on a regular basis. Let’s go back in time to the 1760s! Let’s throw in a Frankenstein because why not? Stuff like that.
The movie, on the other hand, comes off like a contractual obligation, at least on Tim Burton’s part. In fact, we’re kind of wondering if Burton was actually involved at all, or if this was churned out by some no-name hack and Burton put his name on it for a few bucks. It’s a mixture of tired fish-out-of-water jokes and tired ’70s jokes, or as MST3K put it “two bad things put together to make something awful!”
Either way, the trailer is under the jump, for you to judge for yourself.
image courtesy Warner Brothers
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Tim Burton pretty much gave up making real movies once Big Fish didn’t end up winning him any awards.
Actually, I think it dates back to “Mars Attacks!”. He never quite recovered from that being such a huge bomb.
As someone whose seen the original TV soap, the 90′s remake, the 2 feature films, and owns both reunions & best of’s on DVD – there was NO WAY to screw this up!! Yet, Depp & Burton just toke a giant dump on the screen. I doesn’t even look “funny”…which if you’re gonna throw a 30+ TV gothic soap under the bus for laughs – that Might be important.
Yeah, I’ve got to say, it’s pretty hard to screw up a melodrama and yet here we are.
Watching the trailer, I pretty much loved anything that wasn’t directly for laughs. A vampire and a witch feud across time and he comes to protect a new generation oh man, I want to see that! But this, not so much.
everything Johnny Depp has done in the last decade has been aweful.
i don’t know what you’re talking about. that looks exactly like the kind of thing Tim Burton has been doing for years. if he had let some “no name hack”, as you put it, take over then it might be a tad more watchable and a tad less… sad.
how is it a contractual thing, though? isn’t his contract with disney?
Burton has at least been sporadically interesting: “Big Fish” was well executed, “Sweeney Todd” was a solid musical, and “Corpse Bride” was a little too cutesy but not terrible. This just looks like a page one misfire.
its like talking to a hot topic employee or a “face off” contestant. tim burton made a couple interesting films in the 90s and everyone thinks he’s this “master of the macabre” or whatever.
big fish was almost a decade ago.
is the best you can say about the time inbetween that he put out a solid musical and something “not terrible”? in the words of nic cage “that’s high praise.”
It’s called “nuance”, kid. You can like somebody while acknowledging their work has flaws.
oh. well dark shadows has nuance in it then. or whatever.
jesus, you’re an old grouch.
Haaa people from the past don’t understand televisions, oh the hilarity.
its a little more Pee Wee. a bit more Beetlejuice.
and i say its about damn time. maybe Burton’s goth phase is over and he’s going to start making good films?
the 90s can last forever.