Ombres et ténèbres

Mais si le film débute en lion, dans le style gothique angoissant qui a fait la renommée du réalisateur de Sleepy Hollow, il accuse par la suite une sévère baisse de régime.

Il en résulte un scénario aux formules efficaces, des histoires de poisson hors de l'eau, qui ne se signale donc pas par son originalité. Par contre, le style de jeu des acteurs de feuilletons est toujours des plus savoureux.

Dark Shadows is a lost opportunity. It's as exhausting as eternal life, and it feels almost as long.

The movie is completely tone deaf - unsure if it's a horror movie, a comedy or a drama - and never finds anything interesting in the characters for the audience to latch on to.

Everything is wrapped up too neatly, which leaves the door open for a sequel (we'll see), but it doesn't quite gel, and all feels anti-climatic.

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton together again for a fun-enough makeover of an old TV favorite.

The film's strength lies in the juxtaposition of director Tim Burton's Gothic world with '70s pop culture references such as lava lamps and the music of the Carpenters.

Burton's visuals are a sumptuous treat, as is Depp's unerring sense of mischief, playing Barnabas Collins, a vampire with family problems.

Of all the morbid beauties in Tim Burton's work, the spooky goth girls and deathly pale boys, none wear their ghoulishness as lightly or winningly as Johnny Depp. And what a bewitching corpse he makes in Dark Shadows, Mr. Burton's most pleasurable film in years.