Robert Taylor

It’s Thanksgiving week, and holiday periods are a great time to catch up on movies you’ve missed over the years. We did just that with a viewing of Dark Shadows, which I hadn’t even realized had been turned into a film. Expensively produced, a CGI extravaganza, even for a nine year old movie. It’s a tossup which received the least funding in the budget for this film: writing or directing (a not-entirely genuine question, as the director was Tim Burton, who I’m betting was well compensated). At its best, the acting is campy/hammy, with secondary roles existing as plot devices, or to provide expository dialog. Some of the scenes in the movie are disjointed, or are unnecessary; the only reason for the scene where Barnabas Collins slaughters a group of hippies is so he can have a toss-away humorous moment of the vampire quoting from Erich Segal’s Love Story. I don’t know if the entire production team was under instructions not to let anything or anyone take focus away from Johnny Depp, but that was certainly the end result. Michelle Pfeiffer is ordinarily where the viewer’s eyes go on screen, but here she is reduced to line reading. She’s wasted in a role that could have gone to anyone. Bella Heathcote plays two roles, who you are supposed to recognize are related, but this is not adequately communicated through the visuals, where the resemblance is nearly imperceptible. Chloë Grace Moretz’s character is nothing but extended setup, with unsurprising payoff at the end. Helena Bonham Carter is entertaining, but written out too soon. Short version: an entertaining mess and lost opportunity. I don’t regret seeing it, but I don’t need to see it again.

Draggy and tedious, an international cavalcade of human melodrama and bad behavior, interspersed with redeeming moments and, rarely, alien attack. Three episodes in and it all still feels like exposition theater. This needs to get interesting within the next episode or two or I’m out.