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In the 18th century, the Collins made Collinsport, a coastal village they literally founded, one of the greatest fishing ports of Maine. Back then, young Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) had an affair with one of the maids, Angelique (Eva Greene), without ever intending to marry her - not knowing of course that she's actually a witch, and of course she eventually has her revenge on him by killing his parents, his fiancée and love of his life Josette (Bella Heathcote), and ultimately turning him into a vampire, then have the locals bury him alive in a chained shut coffin.

Flash forward 200 or so years, it's the 1970s, and Barnabas' coffin is excavated and he's freed - and kills all those involved in his excavation. Then he wants to reclaim the throne in his family home, but sees that the Collins fishing and canning company as well as the Collins estate have fallen from grace. He winds over the trust of matriarch Elizabeth Collins (Michelle Pfeiffer) though - also because he knows where the family emergency fortune is hidden - and tries to bring back the company to its former glory - much to the dismay of Angelique, who's still alive and as young and beautiful as ever, and whose fishing and canning company is pretty much the dominant force in Maine. And she still has the hots for Barnabas and offers him to either join her or be destroyed. Thing is, among the Collins' staff there is a gouverness, Vicky, who's pretty much the spitting image of Josette (and thus also played by Bella Heathcote). And thus Barnabas asks the resident family doctor Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) to make him human by replacing his blood with human blood. The good doctor does so, or pretends to, as really she wants to become a vampire and has her own blood replaced by his. When Barnabas finds out, he brutally kills her.

Eventually, Angelique goes onto the offensive, blows up the Collins cannery, puts the blame on the Collins, then goes after the Collins estate with a lynch mob - but instead of a mere lynching, Barnabas and Angelique fight it out once and for all, even if everything in their vicinity is laid to waste ...

Christopher Lee has an all too small role as a sea captain Barnabas tries to hire for his company, Alice Cooper plays himself performing at a Collins family event, Chloe Grace Mortez can be seen as a premature daughter of the Collins household who just happens to be a werewolf, and Jackie Earl Haley as the mostly drunk groundskeeper.

What Dark Shadows proves once again is that Tim Burton has an eye for bringing gothic visuals into the modern era, as the film quite simply looks fantastic, and yet the imagery doesn't just steamroll over the story but complements it. And there's already the main problem of Dark Shadows, its script. Now Dark Shadows is of course based on the daily soap of the same name that ran from 1966 to 1971, for more than 1,200 episodes, thus had plenty of time (maybe even too much) to build up its complex story involving witchcraft, vampirism, ghosts, love, revenge and whatnot. Now Dark Shadows the film comes in at under two hours and tries to pack as much as possible into its running time - thus it feels rushed, too many elements of the plot are simply underdeveloped, are pulled out of the hat at an opportune time (like Chloe Grace Mortez being a a werewolf) or just dropped inexplicably. What's more problematic is that the film's also peppered with humour, some of which might be really funny, but it detracts from the story, to a point where it's really hard to identify with the film's central characters. Especially Barnabas seems to be ill-written here, as on one hand he seems to be the "good rich uncle" who saves the Collins family, on the other a ruthless avenger, and his vampiric nature, a central point of his being, is really downplayed, his killings actually happening off-screen. That all said, the film's by no means a total mess, as mentioned above, it looks breathtaking, and the performances by pretty much all of the involved are spot on - it's just that the script could have done with only half the narrative thread and still feel a full (and much more rounded out) movie.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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