Directed by:
Tim BurtonCinematography:
Bruno DelbonnelComposer:
Danny ElfmanCast:
Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
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... (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (14)
Irresistible costumes, makeup and vivid colors create a cute floral seventies atmosphere (with great opening credits).
There are a few cute references and allusions, but you would expect more from Johnny Depp’s ancient vampire’s interactions
with the modern world. Dark Shadows is an eccentric film that attempts to pay homage to all kinds of things Burton likes,
but it’s surprisingly not very funny and the characters are just iconic figures in a story that won’t absorb you. It’s a stylish
farce that looks good but has no heart or emotion. Tim Burton seems to be drying up, which is a shame. It reminded me
of Death Becomes Her.
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Burton fizzled out and there was nothing left but a bunch of make up, pretty sets and once emotive themes. More than anything else, the character of Barnabas is an unintentional authorial self-reflection by a filmmaker who, since Sweeney Todd, has been copying himself and chasing the ghosts of the past.
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I remember times when Tim Burton managed to capture my heart and enchant me with a film that had only a fraction of the budget of Dark Shadows. Something is simply wrong and that is despite the fact that an American studio provided exclusive conditions to the well-known director and that a number of top stars, including Burton's favorites Johnny Depp and his ex-partner Helena Bonham Carter, appear on the screen. The potential is there, but except for the sex appeal-loaded Eva Green, nothing works as I would imagine. By the way, I am one of those men who would without hesitation prefer the demonic witch over the boring Bella as the main hero. Overall impression: 55%.
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It's such a shame that Dark Shadows came along just as most viewers were running out of patience with Tim Burton. I actually like the master of strangeness, and the story of Barnabas Collins seems better to me than the quickly fading Alice in Wonderland or the even more Burton-esque Sweeney Todd. There are a lot of oddities happening at Collinwood that amaze me with the director's imagination, or t which I can hardly resist laughing. Johnny Depp works perfectly as an atypical protagonist without batting an eye, and the rest of the film is stolen by the pubescent princess Chloë Grace Moretz even in a smaller space. Riding the waves of Danny Elfman's soundtrack, I made it to 90% with a slight reserve for distance and further projection, which a few years later confirmed that the rarely appreciated spectacle got stuck on the turbulent cliffs of the time.
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What We Screw Up in the Shadows... Despite the vampire character, this Gothic pride, which suits death so well, is eager to see itself in the mirror. But behind it, there’s nothing left. This has been happening since Charlie’s factory for chubby kids, and some don’t want to admit it. With a bit more of a pointy bust, Eva Green was like Vampira in Ed Wood. It’s no wonder that the firefighters went to Tim Burton’s calves before they went to the Collins estate.
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