DARK SHADOWS.

My expectations for this weren't all that high going into it. Keep that in mind during this review. The film follows Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), a young man who is turned into a vampire by a young witch named Angelique (Eva Green) with whom he had an affair. He ends up trapped in a coffin for a couple hundred years only to wake up in the 1970s. His descendants--Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), Roger (Johnny Lee Miller), David (Gulliver McGrath), and Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), as well as their psychiatrist (Helena Bonham Carter) and caretaker (Jackie Earle Haley)--are now residing in his home. He falls for a new resident, as well, a young woman named Victoria (Bella Heathcote), who looks just like his previous love, who Angelique once killed. But Angelique is still alive and taking over the towns businesses and driving the Collins business out of... well... business. And it's up to Barnabas to help.

This is going to be a pretty short review. I have one main negative and one main positive about the film. The negative... is that the film is incredibly unfocused. Damn near The Room-level unfocused. It starts off with about a 10-minute summary that gets Barnabas in the ground. Then we follow Victoria for a big chunk of the beginning of the movie. So for pretty much the first 30 minutes or so, it's got a more creepy atmosphere, what I'm assuming to be closer to the show. But then Barnabas shows back up and Victoria all but disappears. The film gets incredibly cheesy from this point on (not necessarily a bad thing), and I can't tell what the story is supposed to be. Is it a revenge tale? Is it Barnabas saving the family business? Is it a ghost story? I could continue on and on here. There are just so many damn subplots it was hard to keep anything focused. The worst part is that a big one is the fact Barnabas basically falls in love with Victoria, but once he shows up, Victoria is barely in the movie. There is hardly any interaction between the two characters so it's hard to build up any caring about this relationship. Not to mention there are so many horror subgenres going on here. There's vampires, ghosts, witches, werewolves, etc. (I actually almost lost it when the werewolf twist showed its face, which is rather late in the movie.)

On the upside, despite all of its flaws, I was still really entertained by it. I thought it was rather humorous and charming in its own right. The comedy was solid. The cheesiness was plentiful but not overwhelming. The acting was also good all around, with Depp and Moretz shining through the most. So yeah, I can definitely see why people wouldn't like this flick and would give it a low score. I just happened to be entertained by it. And I don't even think it's in a so-bad-its-good kind of way. It's just a good film with a lot of flaws. For what it was, it was really entertaining, and that was enough for me.


I Am McLovin!

(P.S. My positive feelings were actually stronger right after seeing it, but I've come down just slightly. Still, it's entertaining and harmless, and I don't think anyone should act viscerally toward it.)