As for me, knowing that Barnabas will say the line from Love Story - "Love means never having to say you're sorry" - again makes me want to see this movie all the more. As a historian (who no longer makes any money off of it), I love nostalgia. The trailers show lava lamps, Deliverance playing in the local Collinsport cinema (a movie I and friends managed to see by sneaking into our local theater because it was R-rated), all of it, is capturing me, even if much of it is done in a "humurous vein" - just as our late, great Jonathan Frid called one of his books. Those were memorable times. I remember when we, as high schoolers, went to see American Graffiti. The era depicted existed when we were very young (I was just a kindergartner, so that answers the film's motto of "where were you in '62?" but I remembered it well in 1972 when the film came out). That film had a great deal of comedy, but none of it was designed to denigrate - that's the way things were back in '62. Having a vampire, inculturated in 1772, dealing with 1972 is, to me, brilliant and would be funny.
As for whether or not the film will allow for a sequel - or not - remember, this is Dark Shadows. It doesn't matter if characters are offed or not or whatever. They were in the original and yet they always came back for more. As Mrs. White tells her daughter, Carrie (and, ironically, Chloe Moretz/Carolyn Collins Stoddard will be doing the main role in another cinematic re-telling of Stephen King's classic novel [note I did not say remake]): "Sin never dies....Sin never dies."
Gerard