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Dark Shadows -- Review


You might like this film, if your thing is to be in near proximity to someone who can be tight to the world as a sealed box.  With the help of hypnotism, past connections, or, for us, an entising opening, we all come to him; and though we press upon him sufficiently to make him lean, we feel -- withstood.  I'm tempted to say he's a (Karen) Carpenterish restrained school girl, budding, but with books tight to the chest to keep from betraying herself with jiggle.  But I probably say this mostly because the finish has the just-passed-pubescence, adolescent girl growing all hairy and unruly, raging all out at the full-figured presuming witch who dared trespass into her room.  It flashed upon us like a primal scene amidst otherwise decanted space, maybe searing into our memory.   Afterwards, the boy finally summons up his ghost -- leaving it to a woman (the ghost's his mother) to unleash the arsenal required to daunt the witch -- and the ocean opens us up to a subsequent villain, but to no avail:  we'd sealed up already, content with the first-offered surprise reveal. 

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