Dark Shadows

If it wasn't for Twilight, I might be blaming Tim Burton and Johnny Depp for ruining vampires.

Depp stars as Barnabas Collins - the son of a wealthy entrepreneur who came to America in the 1760's and built a massive business and an entire town in Maine. Barnabas spurned the love of a servant, Angelique (Eva Green), who became a witch, killed everyone he loved and turned Barnabas into a vampire. Then, she trapped him in a coffin (makes the modern day equivalent of writing nasty things on his Facebook page look pretty weak, doesn't it?).

When Barnabas is set free two hundred years later, can he restore the family name to honor and defeat Angelique?

Dark Shadows has so much going for it, but none of it pays off in movie magic. Director Burton and writer Seth Grahame-Smith (based on the 60's soap opera) strain to find a tone, but never really discover nor define it.

Dark Shadows is a quiet movie (both from the silence of the crowd and the lack of big time drama). The funny stuff just isn't funny, and the movie never becomes the fish out of water rapid fire comedy you might think it should be based on all of the marketing. On top of that, the drama is never that dramatic. Everyone is acting in a very subdued way to add a creepy vibe that only comes off as dull because the vibe never contributes to anything.

I don't know how they did it, but Burton and Grahame-Smith have created an uneventful and sparse movie with a thin plot, which somehow becomes an overcrowded picture accomplishing nothing. Talk about your juxtapositions.

Burton and Grahame-Smith give us great characters, but never use them in the right way. Chloe Grace Moretz is one of the best young actors today, and casting her as the rebellious teen Carolyn opposite Depp should lead to amazing dialogue between the two, a palpable kinship between similar stars, and delicious twists and turns, but the two barely have any scenes together, and we are left yearning for more focus on Carolyn than we get.

Then, Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth could have an amazing rivalry with Angelique, which is alluded to, but never explored with the details and depth that would make it come to life, while Helena Bonham Carter suffers from her character's lack of screen time and development as we can tell there is so much more about her we never really learn until it is too late.

Burton and Grahame-Smith lose an entire subplot about the mysterious Victoria (Bella Heathcote), who appears to be drawn to Barnabas and this small Maine town. Again, it is hinted she will play an important role in the movie early on, but Victoria disappears for almost an hour at one point, and only gets tossed into the mix for twists that don't have any impact because they haven't done enough to make us feel this supposedly amazing connection between Barnabas and her.

Worst of all, Burton and Grahame-Smith make the climax into an orgy of surprise twists that come out of nowhere because the two didn't do anything to build them up. They just start tossing ideas at the screen like a kindergartener wildly attacking paper with finger paint.

Seeing a Tim Burton and Johnny Depp movie this bad leaves me as disappointed as the day I learned (Spoiler Alert) there is no Santa Claus.

Dark Shadows is rated PG-13 for comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking