I wonder how would this movie survive without that team of actors specially "Johnny Depp" ?! This is a good fantasy movie without anything genuine, the idea of Vampire and its interaction, the witch and its classic evil character,the mysterious goal of a ghost, and a lot of unexplained events.You will enjoy that movie to an extent, you will get involved in the atmosphere of 1750 and later in the dark environment of 70's, the movie starts well and get your attention in the first half hour then you will get a feeling that another writer got involved suddenly.You will know a sufficient background about the characters, and you may think that the events will follow a specific pathway but you will get surprised a little with the turnovers.The supporting roles are quite a lot here but they didn't add much to the movie and their effect on the events is not that much because everything is about "Johnny Depp" which is not very good thing because that team of supporting actors has much talent that needed to be shown on the screen.The plot of the movie is the weakest point and you will feel a lot of stuff are not explained well, that may be annoying to you.Finally, it's an average "Johnny Depp" movie which i believe he should have his own category, it has good fantasy and weak comedy, and you may feel bored a little but try to overcome that with the music which will keep you alert.

The original TV series was so beloved for its mystique and darkness. It's hard to believe, but this was actually scary at that time. I was excited when I heard the movie was being made. However, I was expecting it to be a full scale horror film. This is what the loyal DS fans were hoping for. It would be great if they would remake this movie in a serious horror style. Bet the profit margin would be significantly higher.

I'm finally getting around to review this one. The film is a cute tongue-in-cheek comedy horror. I will admit, I do wish they would have made the film a pure horror instead but I did enjoy the comedy in it so I won't complain to much about it.There is a great cast, a Gothic charm, some rather weird scenes that is enjoyable. Story is fine and it's well filmed. But it pales in comparison to the TV show which was a drama and not comical.Yes I wish this film took itself seriously and it was a pure drama (that's why I didn't rate it higher) but the Burton and Depp dark comedies are to much for me to resist so therefore, I'm giving it a rating I think is fair enough.7/10

Translating television shows to the big screen is part and parcel of popular film-making dating back to the 1950s. So it was no surprise that Dark Shadows, the legendary Gothic horror soap opera that ran from 1966-1971, came back to the big screen in 2012. Unlike the earlier low-budget films made after the show's demise, this one was to be a big budget star vehicle from director Tim Burton with a cast that included Johnny Depp. On the surface, it looked to be a wonder mix of a director and star getting the chance to bring a mutual favorite of theirs to life once more. What it became instead was something of a mess.To be fair, translating any long running program to the big screen would be a challenge. Never mind if that series ran for something like 1200 episodes like Dark Shadows did while covering everything from vampires to witches, werewolves, and ghosts not to mention usual soap opera tropes like family secrets and twisted relationships. Yet for its opening twenty-odd minutes, Burton and his writers (John August and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter writer Seth Grahame-Smith) seem to do it as they quickly introduce the series most famous character, the vampire Barnabas Collins (played by Depp) and set the stage for the film's main setting: the Maine town of Collinsport in 1972. For these opening minutes, it's a wonderful Gothic film full of atmosphere and menace as Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) is introduced to the Collins family and their home. It doesn't last very long though.Sadly, once Depp's Barnabas reappears, the film can't figure out what it's meant to be. Is it an adaptation of the TV series? Is it a Gothic horror film? Is it a parody of the series? Instead of picking any one of those (which, under Burton's direction, would undoubtedly have been interesting), the script tries to be all three. For nearly ninety minutes of its running time, the film moves along from one genre to the other. Worse, it often does so within the same scene which leaves scenes feeling even weirder than one might normally expect within a Tim Burton film. One never knows where to laugh, cringe, or be scared and the result is a film that is immensely unsatisfying to say the least.It also plays merry havoc with every single performance in the film. Depp's Barnabas has some good moments but the ever shifting nature of the film, especially the attempts to make it comedic, never give him anything really solid enough to play with. The havoc really takes its toll on the usually reliable Eva Green as the villainous witch Angelique who instead gives a performance that, outside of her appearance in the film's opening minutes, becomes overplayed to the point of lacking either menace or humor. The rest of the cast including Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, and Jonny Lee Miller are all effectively wasted as nobody gets anything solid to do in the film with Carter and Miller in particular playing parody versions of their TV counterparts. Of the entire cast, Bella Heathcote as Victoria Winters fares better but largely because her character becomes the audience's in-road to the Collins' family and by her becoming Depp's love interest, something that allows her to shine ahead of almost everyone else. It's a potentially good cast let down by a poor script.Yet the film does have some positive attributes. The aforementioned opening minutes are superb with the combination of script, Burton's direction, and production values creating a wonderful atmosphere that the film then throws away. Even in the lackluster parts of the film, the production values are first rate though. The 1972 setting of the film is interesting with 1970s fashions conflicting nicely with the Gothic mansion. Indeed, Collinwood itself is a wonderful piece of pastiche Gothic design though Burton has always had that on his side. There's a number of nice cameos as well including some members of the original Dark Shadows cast that eagle eyed viewers might spot. If one was to rate the film on style instead of substance, it would be pretty good.Yet for all of its aesthetic attributes, Tim Burton's film of Dark Shadows is a mess. The biggest fault lies in with a script that can't ever quite make up its mind what kind of story it's trying to tell which in turn leaves virtually the entire cast out to dry. The opening minutes hint at a film that could have been good but instead it feels like a trailer for a film that should have been made but wasn't. Bigger isn't always better and this film is a perfect example of how not to bring a TV series to the big screen.