Films to see

It is not clear what Dark Shadows is trying to achieve. It offers some good moments and then a multitude of disappointments.

The film's structure is a failure. It has too many loose ends, probably due to an excessively large number of characters. It looks like it is aiming at a more-or-less circular structure, but this isn't very well handled, and the film ends up somewhere else.

There is an apparent use of juxtaposition of light humorous motives with the dark spookiness typical to Tim Burton's style. At times, this has a very strong impact, creating some rather emotionally disturbing moments adding to the film's atmosphere, whereas some instances of these juxtapositions only manage to dull each other, making the scenes in question neither spooky nor funny. Despite this, the film still has some very good moments such as occasional jokes in other layers, but due to the weak structure, they don't seem very strong when looking at the big picture. Still, the choice of music throughout the film is consistently funny in a good way.

Dark Shadows is certainly no masterpiece, but it has some features of a good film, and even though it is disappointing in total, it is not a complete waste of time. It won't make you die laughing, it certainly won't make you scared, but it is a relatively comfortable watch, and it is definitely better than some of the things out there.