A small crowd was recently shown a test screening of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows. I’m actually a little surprised at how positive they are based on how goofy Depp looks. Anyways, let me jump right to the good stuff. Here’s what one viewer had to say about the film and some of the plot points of the story.
“I can honestly say that I really enjoyed it and that it does have some great laughs in it.”
“I don’t know much about the original series or what the tone might have been, but this version is most definitely a comedy, and a pretty damned funny one.”
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“The film opens with a flashback narrated by Depp, showing a young Barnabas and his family leaving England for the New World in the late 1700’s. We see the Collins family make their fortune and home in America, watching as Barnabas grows up to be a young man, and quite the heartbreaker. He eventually breaks the heart of the wrong woman, a beautiful servant girl named Angelique (played by Eva Green) who also happens to be a powerful witch. She curses Collins, destroying his family and the woman he loves before turning Barnabas into a vampire. Before long, Barnabas finds himself at the hands of an angry mob led by Angelique and is buried in a chained casket condemned to spend eternity in darkness.”
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“It’s more of a horror comedy, closer in tone to “Beetlejuice” or “The Addams Family,” only a little sexier and with implied violence. There are the usual ‘fish out of water’ moments as Barnabus tries to wrap his head around the modern world of the 1970’s. At one point he mistakenly believes his 15-year old niece is a prostitute because of her skimpy outfits and later attacks a television set showing a performance by The Carpenters (most things he can’t understand he interprets as Satan). Depp makes those moments work wonderfully because he plays Barnabas with such earnestness that you can’t help but like the guy, even when he’s kind of an asshole (he does kill several people).”