Dark Shadows

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp collaborate for the eighth time for their lively and down right bonkers adaptation of the little seen cult 1960s Gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows. Depp portrays Barnabas Collins, a wealthy playboy of the successful Collins family in the late 1700s, who rubs up the wrong housemaid in the form of evil witch Angelique (Eva Green). Fuelled with a jealous rage, Angelique causes the destruction of the Collins’ family, killing Barnabas’ parents and lover Josette (Heathcote). She then proceeds to turn Barnabas into a vampire so that he may be tormented with the grief for all eternity, burying him alive in a chained coffin in the woods.

When Barnabas is accidentally freed from his captivity, it's to find that it's now 1972. He proceeds to reconnect with his dysfunctional descendants and, upon finding that the family is a shadow of its former self, Barnabas commits himself to making the Collins family great once again. If coming to terms with the future and dealing with his curse wasn’t bad enough, Angelique is still around, determined to make sure Barnabas does not succeed.

Dark Shadows is very much a film where the plot is not an entirely necessary commodity. It is a madcap movie, with many sub-plots, true to its soap opera roots. Burton and Depp clearly love the source material and have great fun presenting it in a new, very Burton-esque fashion. The film itself is a lot darker than the comedy trailers suggest, and it is all the more better for it, adding some nice Gothic nastiness to the fish-out-of-water hijinks.

It all amounts to a film with a decidedly goofy charm and the trademark style we've come to expect from Burton. So for a fun, dark, trademark Burton experience, Dark Shadows certainly ticks all the boxes.

Andrew Gaudion