I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Tim Burton is a hit-and-miss director for me because most of the time I am a big fan of his work. I love Big Fish, Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands, while I consider Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street nothing short of a master piece. I however am not a fan of some of his other works such as his reditions of Batman and his recent remakes of Alice and Wonderland and what I consider to be his worst movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

When it comes to Dark Shadows I can say without a doubt that it is a definite miss for me. This actually comes as a surprise for me because this seemed like just the project to get Burton back on track. Unfortunately the film falls flat and while entertaining at times, it fails to be anything more the a campy joke. This fact is a bit sad, because as I said before this film certainly had some potential.

The acting wasn’t the problem however because as per usual, the star of the film is Johnny Depp and like always he does a fantastic job. The real stand out performance here was Casino Royale’s Eva Green playing a sultry witch attempting to gain the love of the film’s protagonist. Rounding out a great supporting cast are none other than Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter.

Dark Shadows started off on some fun notes easily playing off of its 1970s and vampire gimmicks. The relationships and the odd family at hand were very entertaining and the film flourished whenever Eva Green came into play. However by the end of it all the decent movie I was watching subtly went down hill and turned into what reminded me of The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy except with all of Dark Shadows’ plot holes and useless subplots I would’ve been much more entertained by The Haunted Mansion.

Dark Shadows was just not a good movie. It was fun for a little while, but before long I felt embarassed to call myself a fan of Tim Burton. It just amazed me how dreadfully dull the end result truly was. MY biggest problem with the film may lie in the fact that the climax was incredibly forced and ended up being easily the worst and longest scene in the film. All of this to say, I will not be watching this film again.

Grade: D+