Is my laptop monitor dead?

A very dark display can mean a faulty monitor, a bad brightness setting of the monitor, or the gamma correction set to a value less than 1.
The fact that you, at least, get a very dark display indicate that the monitor is not dead, at least, not yet. It may be in bad shape.

Faulty drivers should not cause a very dark display.

It looks like you have 2 logon screens... I guess that the first you mention is realy the boot splash screen.

The fact that the logon screen is never displayed point to a serious problem on the OS level.
Try returning to a previous recovery point.

Electro
June 2013