The Headliner

Dark Shadows

When I first saw the trailer for Tim Burton's feature-film remake of the 40-plus-year-old vampire soap opera, I wondered whom it was for. After seeing the film, I still don't know.

I mean, maybe the idea behind taking this campy, culty pop-culture property and winkily making it a comedy about characters unstuck from their proper time was to repeat the success of The Brady Bunch Movie? The difference there is that even people who never watched The Brady Bunch at least were aware of who the characters were and, if nothing else, were familiar with the theme song. Dark Shadows may have been a phenomenon in its day, but in 2012 the people who aren't tired of vampires yet want them to be tragically brooding or legitimately scary, not the foppish buffoon of Johnny Depp's Barnabas Collins. Since it's set in the '70s, the jokes are mainly of the "Hey, remember this dumb thing?" variety (see also: The Wedding Singer). And if there was a reason for Chloë Grace Moretz to be involved at all, I would love an explanation.

Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci share an office — and a spacious desk — in a largish bungalow on the Universal Studios lot. The ceilings are high, the décor is film-geek-made-good — vintage posters for Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and General Dynamics, a giant Iron Man head, a circa-1983 stand-up Star Wars arcade game, couches you could hibernate on.

This is what a comfort zone looks like: Kurtzman and Orci, who met nearly 20 years ago in a film class at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, got here by writing blockbuster entertainments both large (J.J. Abrams's Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek) and gargantuanly large (the first and third Transformers films). Together, they're responsible for something like $3 billion in box office revenue. Even their last bomb, 2011's Cowboys & Aliens, grossed $174 million worldwide. There's a black Porsche sitting sleek and Decepticon-like in Kurtzman's parking space out front.