Dark Shadows mini-review

If anyone's earned the right to pastiche Tim Burton, it's probably Tim Burton. And Dark Shadows is good fun - playful, sparky dialogue, atmospherically shot and with a good-if-not-great cast.

But it does feel a bit like Burton doing 'one for the studio'. What you'd expect from one of his films - Depp, Bonham Carter, families, monsters, families of monsters, Gothic camp - are all there in a slightly too predictable fashion. And the film has an episodic structure - a legacy of its TV show origins? - which moves the film on too quickly from one plot point to the next to give it intelligence or emotional heft. 

As my companion remarked, it would have worked much better as a mini-series, giving it room to breathe.