At the movies: Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows: 3

This was my first movie at the theatres this year. We had planned on seeing The Avengers, but the showtime we wanted was sold out. Dark Shadows was showing within a short timeframe, so we chose it as an alternative.

After seeing all of the trailers, I was not very gung-ho to see the movie. It looked too campy for my tastes. I'm pleased to report that it was not as campy as I'd feared.

I know that growing up I did watch some of Dark Shadows. How much, I don't really have any idea. So, I can't really claim to know the story behind the original soap opera. Looking at Wikipedia last night, though, shows the movie was pretty faithful to the original.

I was pretty pleased with the overall acting, it matched the subject matter. I was generally disappointed in atmospherics. The film was set in 1972 and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" came out in 1973. I actually thought there was a greater difference than that, so they generally got things right. I guess the movie just didn't thrill me.

I was interested to see that Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino are both fans of the original show. I can only imagine what this movie would have looked like had Quentin ended up directing it. I'm not certain it would have happened since Johnny Depp was apparently the driving force behind getting the movie made, but it would definitely have been a different movie.