Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Day 281

movie: Tim Burton's Dark Shadows
starring: Johnny Depp, Jonny Lee Miller
genre:Comedy, Drama
year: 2012
format: Shaw Video On Demand

plot: After rejecting his lover, Barnabas Collins is cursed to live as a vampire and everything he cares about is destroyed. When he still refuses to marry the witch who cursed him, he's locked in a coffin and buried alive.  200 years later, he is set free, only to find that the last few family members of his bloodline still carry his curse and the witch still running the town.

The highly comical remake of the classic soap opera, had me laughing out loud through most of it.
I've seen the odd episode of the original, and the movie House of Dark Shadows, plus the 1991 remake starring Ben Cross, so I wasn't going into this as blind as a bat. 

Still, if you're looking for dark and gloomy, this only fits the bill in set design not script.   Tim Burton did a fantastic job at reworking the classic vampire soap.  Johnny Depp played it with just a pinch of naughtiness and a bucketful of clueless charm. I'm surprised it took so long for the duo to get around to sinking their teeth into such a chewy project.
To say this film was done in brilliant techno-colour is an understatement, as the scenes with blood were brightened to look like the goo in a lava lamp. The texture and colour was over the top and reminded me of play-doh.

There were a few backstories that I would have liked to have expanded, but otherwise this is just the gothic humour you would expect from Tim Burton.
This film proves once again that when you have the combination of Depp and Burton you have a great way to spend two hours.  

Witches, Vampires, Ghosts and Werewolves, and Alice Cooper!  I have a taste for  a sequel.

what do i think i learned from this film?
What I've said for years, never send a witch to do a vampire's job.

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