Dark Shadows

My wife and I saw Dark Shadows and we liked it.

I’m old enough to have watched the series when it was originally on TV so I have a concept in my mind of what Dark Shadows should be.  I never expected the movie to match that since you can’t reproduce a soap opera, or even a story arc from a TV series, in a movie.  What I was hoping for was something different that would stand on its own.  That’s pretty much what I got.  It was enough its own story that you could separate it from the series and I liked it as a retelling of the story.

I have to admit that I was worried that the movie would be too campy.  Which is not to say that there was no camp in the series, but it was a different sort than you can get from Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.  Fortunately, they did not go too far.  There was definitely more intentional humor but I thought that it was well balanced and well used. 

I say intentional because, if you don’t know the series, there was humor in unexpected and unintended places.  If they snuck a scene in the movie where the walls moved or a stage hand was on camera I missed it.  That sort of thing happened on occasion in the show and I wouldn’t have minded seeing that in the movie as a sort of homage to the original.

As an aside, the people who made Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country missed a golden opportunity to put in the line: “Damn it, Jim!  I’m a doctor not an engineer!”  But I digress.

I did catch, I think, Jonathan Frid’s brief cameo which was nice to see.

The movie played on the man out of time element without overdoing that either.  Speaking of overdoing it the foreshadowing of the McDonald’s snark was really obvious.  Actually, I didn’t see it coming as foreshadowing at first, I just thought it was a somewhat hidden joke.

Overall I liked the movie.  It was entertaining and a fun movie going experience.  That is not faint praise, that is what I usually look for in a movie.  My wife and I don’t make it to many movies in a year – 3 is average – and what I want is entertainment and fun. 

As far as aesthetic, the movie is not quite as atmospherically dark as the series, but the look and feel of Collinwood were very well done with some scenes on the rocky coast that could have been from the TV show.  While they didn’t use the original theme – which I sort of wanted to hear – there was a brief reference to it with some flute themes in the score.  The use of period music was fun, too, and I’m sure it was a lot of fun for Danny Elfman to do.

The blend of comedy, horror and drama did a good job of evoking the feel of the series.  I would have done some things differently, but I say go see the it.  I was afraid I wouldn’t, but I enjoyed it.

Oh, and stay until after the credits.