Dark Shadows (Blu-ray Review)
Director Tim Burton brought the cult classic series “Dark Shadows” to the big screen in a film featuring an all-star cast, led by Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter and now it’s out on Blu-ray. In the year 1750, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from England to start a new life in America, where they build a fishing empire in the coastal Maine town that comes to carry their name: Collinsport. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of falling in love with a beauty named Josette DuPres (Bella Heathcote) and breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death—turning him into a vampire, and then burying him…alive.
Film 
Dark Shadows, on the surface seemed to be a great vehicle for director Tim Burton’s unique talents. In his hands, Dark Shadows could have been a straight up dark thriller, a comedy, or a hybrid of both which is his usual modus-operandi. Once again, Burton has crafted a darkly humorous tale about a bunch of misfits that don’t easily fall into society’s stereotypes. If you wonder what the final result of this movie is, imagine if you combined the atmosphere from Sleepy Hollow, the fish out of water antics from Edward Scissorhands, and the pitch black humor of Death Becomes Her, the end result would be very close to Dark Shadows.
After being buried for two centuries, Barnabas (Johnny Depp) is accidentally discovered and freed by a construction crew. He’s quite thirsty after all of this time and he quickly kills all of the men after apologizing in advance. Now that it’s 1972, Barnabas has a lot to catch up on and that’s the best part of the movie and the main source of the movie’s many humorous scenes. Simple things like roads and the sight of a McDonald’s sign throw him into a tizzy and Depp is at his best conveying his horror or fascination at each of these new changes. When Barnabas returns to his ancestral home Collinwood Manor, his bewilderment only increases when he sees that the estate has fallen into disrepair and that the once-booming family business has been mostly crushed by his old nemesis Angelique (Eva Green) who is still very much alive and running the town.
The remaining Collins are a mixed bunch with secrets of their own, including family matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), her loser brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) and his children Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz) and David (Gully McGrath) as well as the family psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter). Barnabas confides his true nature to Elizabeth in order to convince her that he is the original Barnabas who belongs in the manor and once he also shows her his hidden treasures, she agrees to keep his secret and allow him to stay with the family. The rest of the family warms up to him once he reverses the family fortunes and rebuilds their business. That success doesn’t go unnoticed by Angelique (now known as Angie) who isn’t happy to see the Collins family make a comeback. Having cursed Barnabas because he loved Josette instead of her, Angie’s fury is reawakened when Barnabas falls in love with Victoria (Bella Heathcote) who happens to be a splitting image of Josette.
The rest of the movie is basically the battle between Barnabas and Angie with little more involved. There isn’t a deep plot in this movie and there’s many plot-lines that go nowhere like the ghost Josette who not only grows up with Victoria and the unexplained fact that Victoria is a doppelganger of Josette. There must be a lot of deleted footage that contained other paths that were left unexplored. Dark Shadows is fun to watch but it’s also somewhat aimless and simple, which is a shame since this could have been even better. This movie also serves as Burton and Depp’s eighth collaboration and the movie is a who’s who of other past Burton favorites including Danny Elfman. While I like seeing Burton and Depp work together, it’s starting to blend together. It’s almost as if there’s a checklist between them that they follow for each film including having Depp wear white face-paint for every role (at least this time it’s for a good reason). Despite the film’s shortcomings, Depp and the rest of the cast are a lot of fun to watch but fans of the original TV series may not be as pleased to see this more comedy-centric remake.
Video 
This 1080p (1.78:1) transfer is dark and beautiful and fully lives up to my expectations for a Tim Burton film. The film’s moody and atmospheric are perfectly captured with this gorgeous transfer. This movie’s color palette veers between monochromatic to explosions of color and this transfer delivers all of it well. Color, when it’s allowed to make an appearance, is dramatically reproduced although it’s basically limited to blood or when Angelique is on-screen. Flesh tones (or lack thereof with Barnabas) looks natural and consistent and the black levels are thankfully as dark and solid as they should be for a movie like this.
Audio 
Dark Shadow’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is just as good as the video quality and it also shares its focus on atmosphere too. Since Dark Shadows is something of a hybrid between a horror film and a comedic one, this mix has a tricky balance to maintain but it manages to do it nicely. I really liked how this lossless mix captured the atmosphere such as the crashing ocean waves, the sound of the rustling wind through the branches, and the sounds of Barnabas’s mansion itself which give it a life of its own. The accuracy of the directional sound effects also adds quite a bit of immersion to the film. Dialogue is very clear and clean, and Danny Elfman’s score is nicely balanced with the effects and dialogue. The 70s era music also sounds fantastic as well. This is a great mix that will please fans.
Extras
While there’s a lot of extras on here quantity-wise, they are all very short and not very in-depth. The good news is that they are all in high definition.
- Maximum Movie Mode – This is a Picture-in-Picture track that plays in the bottom right hand corner that conveys some information from the cast and crew about the movie as the movie plays on. I don’t think this is the usual maximum movie mode that people are expecting since it’s really just watching the movie with the focus points playing alongside it. There’s some good info here but I expected more from this extra.
- Focus Points – The bulk of the extras are included here as there’s thirty-seven minutes of mini looks at the film that include: “Becoming Barnabas,” “Welcome to Collinsport,” “The Collinses: Every Family Has Its Demons,” “Reliving a Decade,” “Angelique: A Witch Scorned,” “Alice Cooper Rocks Collinsport,” “Dark Shadowy Secrets,” “A Melee of Monstrous Proportions” and “Dark Shadows: The Legend Bites Back.” They are interesting but so short that they should have just edited it all together to make one decent extra. I hate it when they break it up into three to five minute segments and even worse, there isn’t even a “play all” option.
- Deleted Scenes – There’s six minutes of deleted scenes which really aren’t worth checking out except for the one between Barnabas and David which I thought was pretty good and has a funny end to it which should have been kept in the movie.
Summary
I don’t think this one of Tim Burton’s best films (or Johnny Depp’s for that matter), but I enjoyed it and the cast in their roles. I think a lot of people didn’t like the mix of horror and comedy and would have preferred for the film to focus on just one of them, but I like the quirkiness of the movie and Burton’s customary dark humor. Burton assembled a fantastic cast and all of his usual regulars which is always nice to see too. The Blu-ray offers some excellent video and audio quality but it could have done a better job with the extras. If you are a fan of Johnny Depp or Tim Burton, or if you just want to see something a little off-kilter, then pick this movie up and give it a chance.
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