Mp’s rating: 6.5/10
Plot: 6/10
Acting: 6.5/10
Effects: 7/10

After much anticipation of Tim Burton / Johnny Depp’s new movie, I have to admit that the movie is a bit under my expectation. However, it is still a good entertainment nevertheless.

The plot is pretty much like The Haunted Mansion. The only exception is that the rich guy who owned the mansion didn’t hang himself after his loved one was killed. Well, in Dark Shadows, he did try to kill himself, but he became a vampire.

And oh, in The Haunted Mansion, it was his male maid that cursed him and made him to become a ghost. In Dark Shadows, the maid that cursed him to become a vampire was a female. (super similar storyline, right?)

In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet-or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better…

The acting, except for Johnny Depp, was ordinary. As a quirky, weird Vampire who has lived for 200 years, Depp does show a good performance. However, I don’t really like the storyline. I think it’s not developed enough, and if I were Tim Burton, I would do things differently.

The movie has a lot of humour, but for some reasons I just didn’t laugh out loud. I did laugh a couple of times on certain scenes, but it was not a really good laugh that made your stomach hurt…

So, spoiler alert, and this is what I’ll do differently.

First of all, I’ll get rid of the weird lovemaking scene between Johnny Depp and his ex-maid who is also the witch who cursed Depp to become a vampire.

Second, I would tell a little bit more about Josette (the so-called Johnny Depp’s one true love). And how on earth does she get reincarnated? That is super weird. And the story doesn’t even tell anything about her, except that she is a girl, who is Depp’s “one true love”.

Third, I would make the witch’s death scene more dramatic, and tell a little bit more about her background as well. Why does she love Depp that deeply? Why does she curse him? Why then, does she decide to kill herself?

But overall, it was quite an entertaining movie.