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Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bella Heathcote, Eva Green, Chloe Moretz ... see more see more... , Helena Bonham Carter , Gulliver McGrath , Jackie Earle Haley , Jonny Lee Miller , Gully McGrath , Ray Shirley , Thomas McDonell , Christopher Lee , Ivan Kaye , Justin Tracy , Susanna Cappellaro , Josephine Butler , William Hope , Shane Rimmer , Michael J. Shannon , Harry Taylor , Glen Mexted , Guy Flanagan , Nigel Whitmey , Philip Bulcock , Sophie Kennedy Clark , Hannah Murray , Victoria Bewick , Sean Mahon , Alexia Osborne , Richard Hollis , Felicity Brangan , Michael Anthony Brown , Charlotte Spencer , Gabriel Freilich , Thomas Grube , Jeff Mash , Raffey Cassidy , Janine Craig , Adelle Young , Dominica Van Santen , Josephine McGrail , Alice Cooper

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 g... read more read more...rave 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, each harboring their own dark secrets. -- (C) Warner Bros.

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204 critics

PG-13, 1 hr. 53 min.

Directed by: Tim Burton

Release Date: May 11, 2012

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Flixster Reviews (4,525)

  • skactopus
    May 27, 2012
    skactopus
    Stemming from the television series by the same name, Tim Burton takes a bite out of the supernatural with Dark Shadows.

    The concept behind the story screams of eccentric visuals and even outlandish characters and this is something that is in the realm of this director.

    ... read more With that said, Tim Burton keeps things in check and despite the fantasy components, this 110 minute film is more down to earth than it seems.

    While this picture becomes more tolerable and easier to watch with the less than expected quirks, the humor also takes a dive. The laughs are far and few in between; however, that doesn't make Dark Shadows a complete bore because it does have entertainment value.

    The screen belongs to Johnny Depp and it's hard to fault anything he does, but watch out for Eva Green. She is as much of a scene stealer as Depp. Both are worth the price of admission.

    Dark Shadows isn't perfect by any means, but it is still an entertaining sit through.
  • fb535316333
    May 26, 2012
    fb535316333
    Burton's latest live action instalment is more or less a disappointment of disjointed events. It's unfortunate really, as it had all the quirky characters and charming little scenes that you'd expect from the guy (It's silly and fun!) but it was built on none of the poetic or dra... read morematic finesse that made his other works so successful.

    I don't know, maybe he just got lazy but there were far too many inconsequential subplots and motives in play making for a lack of cohesion.

    The visuals and themes are undoubtedly there, the actors? All very well versed in their roles (especially Green!) and there's a moment where Tim manages to find an awkward happy place between sexy and hilarious.

    But yes, despite all these positives there's just too much not working out for this films overall framework of storytelling.
  • fb100000145236770
    May 25, 2012
    fb100000145236770
    Johnny Depp has made a career out of playing odd ball characters. From Willy Wonka to Edward Scissorhands and Jack Sparrow, he has a knack for bringing the weird into the mainstream. Here he plays Barnabas Collins, a man who has been cursed for breaking the heart of Angelique(Ev... read morea Green). She cursed him by turning him into a vampire and burying him alive. After nearly two centuries lock in a coffin, he is freed and works to adjust to life in 1972 with the descendants of his family. He falls in love with the new family nanny Victoria(Bella Heathcote),and tries to figure out how to get Angelique(who is still alive) to release the curse. The acting is good from Depp, all the way through the supporting cast. Each performance is spot on and done very well. The issue with this movie is not in the story or performances, but in the direction. Tim Burton is a fantastic director, but here I got the sense that he had no idea what kind of movie he wanted to make. Part horror, part drama, and part comedy, makes for an interesting recipe that doesn't work very well. It's as if he made three movies and cut them together. It's just hard figuring out how to describe it, because it falls in all three categories. Not funny enough to be an outright comedy. Not scary enough for horror, and not nearly dramatic enough to be a drama. It's a decent movie, that warrants at least a watch. But, Depp and Burton have done much better, and will probably do much better in the future.
  • fb733768972
    May 24, 2012
    fb733768972
    Never knowing where it wants to go, "Dark Shadows" is the type of movie that only die hard Tim Burton fans will love. The cast is fantastic as they always are in his films, but the story is very generic and almost feels like it steals from the rules of twilight sometimes. Don't g... read moreet me wrong, I did it enjoy some of it and there were a few awesome scenes, but if that is all that I enjoyed about it, then no, i didn't like it that much. When the movie ended, I wanted to yell at the screen, because this film starts with so much potential but never delivers. I hoped for so much more out of this film. "Dark Shadows" is among many of my 2012 shrugged shoulder films. I will mildly recommend this to any fans of Tim Burton, but other than that, you will probably hate it. "Dark Shadows" will be forgotten in the shadows of 2012.
  • blacksheepboy
    May 21, 2012
    blacksheepboy
    Even with spectacular visuals and an enjoyable performance by Depp, it is frustrating to see a promising first half give place to a meandering second half that is so unfunny and disjointed, with many unnecessary elements thrown in for no reason and a horrible ending.
  • LorenzoVonMatterhorn
    May 20, 2012
    LorenzoVonMatterhorn
    "Every Family Has Its Demons"

    An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection.

    REVIEW

    ... read moreCamp piled on camp would be over the top for the best cinema satirists except maybe David Lynch and the durable Tim Burton. The latter has taken on the campy '70's TV program, Dark Shadows, enlisted his usual suspects, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and made a comedy that holds up for laughs and wit, the latter being the province of the gifted Depp. Barnabas Collins returning to Maine after sleeping for over 200 years, finds his dysfunctional family, well, still dysfunctional. His saving their fortune and indulging his enduring playboy inclinations, puts him fang to fang again with witch Angelique, played deliciously over the top by blonde barracuda, Eva Green. Lurking in these shadows is Depp, who plays Collins with such uncharacteristic restraint that he captures his seductiveness and his menace in every turn of his smacking lips. Burton and Depp have been together eight times starting in 1990 with Edward Scissorhands. Given the lack of financial success in Dark Shadows, it may be time to bury the relationship and resurrect it at a time when, like Collins, they can feed a nostalgic craze for them rather than noticeable box office yawns.
  • PedroPauloA
    May 20, 2012
    PedroPauloA
    The legend bites back

    Bite me? this movie sucks

    No vampire pun intention but this movie sucks. I did not like any second of the movie, and now Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are starting to get on my nerves.

    This horrible and repetitive movie is a Burton (lets make thinks corky an... read mored dark) film that has no significant plot either than, Barnabas Collins (Depp) a vampire who returns from two centuries later after being cursed by a witch to revive his families buisness and discover the secrets that have been kept from him.

    As much as this movie is considered to be a comedy it is not funny at all. I didn't laugh one second. I am starting to give less credibility to Depp because he just plays crazy goofy characters. Tim Burton's style has been overplayed and he is starting to lack originality. Overall a bad movie. Skip this one, because there is genuinely one billion things better to do than watch this.

    Barnabas Collins: What kind of sorcery is this? Reveal yourself, you tiny songstress!
  • moonrivers
    May 18, 2012
    moonrivers
    The old television series is only the starting point in Burton's kitschy swipe at the 1970's that plays more like a Mad magazine send-up, only w/o heart, tainted with ennui. There are creepy shadows but not so much. Only Helena Bonham Carter (playing a middle aged American frum... read morep, against type) surpasses expectation and her's is but a supporting part. Similiarly all the interesting parts of the movie float on the sidelines and never take center stage, as if Burton refused to play hardball. Pfeiffer is completely wasted, and Depp hardly seems to care. CGI abounds.
  • mrbungle7821
    May 15, 2012
    mrbungle7821
    Dark Shadows was a daytime soap that aired for only a brief period of time as far as soaps are concerned, 1966-1971, but it was enough to make a lasting impression. The supernatural soap featured vampires, werewolves, and other creatures of the night, entangled in high-stakes dra... read morema and romantic excursions - it was the Twilight of its day. Director Tim Burton and his attached-at-the-hip collaborator, actor Johnny Depp, were fans as children and have kicked around a big-budget big screen version for years. Now that Dark Shadows hits theaters, you'll be left wondering whether they really ever liked the original show or secretly despised it.

    In the 1770s, Barnabus Collins (Depp) is the son of fishing and canning magnate in colonial Maine. He has a fling with Angelique (Eva Green), one of his family's servant girls, and unfortunately for him, the gal is also a witch in her spare time. She curses the Collins family, killing Barnabus' mother, father, and the woman he loves. She then turns him into a vampire, riles the villagers into mob mode, and Barnabus gets trapped in a coffin and buried for good.

    Two hundred years later, a construction crew unearths an old coffin and out pops Barnabus from his prison. The world is a very different place. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) is running the Collins family manor and canning company, which has fallen on hard times. A rival canning company is snapping up fisherman contracts, and this company is led by none other than the same ageless Angelique. Elizabeth tries to conceal her distant relative's unique "condition" from the rest of her family, her brother Roger (Johnny Lee Miller), and his son David (Gulliver McGrath), grieving the loss of his mother, moody 15-year-old daughter Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz), and caretaker, Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley). The Collins family also has a new hire, Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote), who looks strikingly like Barnabus' lost love from 200 years ago. He becomes smitten with the new lass, who may be the reincarnation of his lost love. That's enough to rev up Angelique's wild sense of jealousy, as she tries to get her long-desired man and destroy anyone that stands in her way.

    Is this ever one ghoulish mess of a movie. It never settles on a tone; is it supposed to be a larky tongue-in-cheek send-up, a Gothic melodrama, a dysfunctional oddball family comedy? What is this supposed to be, because whatever it is, it isn't entertaining. Oh sure, it's entertaining in a, "Where the hell is this going?" kind of way, but so is being kidnapped by a drifter. The movie feels like it has a box filled with ideas, and every so often it just shakes up that box, reaches inside, grabs one and says, "Let's give this a try." The screenplay, credited to author Seth Grahame-Smith (Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), is awash with half-baked ideas and poorly developed characters. The live-in doctor, played by the second stalwart of the Burton Repertory Players, Helena Bonham Carter, is a hoot. Carter (The King's Speech) has got an edge to her and an interesting dynamic with Barnabus, but sadly her storyline is tied up far too quickly. The character of Victoria is a rather interesting one, a girl who could communicate with her ghostly former relatives, who happen to look just like her. The gal was sent to a mental asylum by her parents and escaped, compelled to come to the Collins mansion. Why in the world wasn't she the movie's protagonist? That is a far more compelling perspective than a goofy vampire who speaks all old timey. Seriously, the Barnabus stuff is your basic fish-out-of-water comedy, lazily commenting on the times. There is no joke that is too obvious for this movie (Barnabus inquires why Carolyn has no husband; Barnabus is fascinated by a lava lamp; Barnabus thinks Alice Cooper is an ugly woman - sigh). A lot of the shapeless narrative would be forgivable if the movie was just funnier. Barnabus is just not that fun of a character. His anachronistic verbiage gets dull when you discover that seems to be the movie's one joke. You may start tuning him out like I did.

    The movie feels like a collection of subplots and no main storyline to gather traction. We're told that the youngest Collins, little David, is enamored with Barnabus, though considering we've only seen the two together in like one previous scene, this seems like quite a leap. Unless David has gotten particularly skilled at hiding behind rocks, we haven't seen any of this. The entire character of David and his sleazy father could be eliminated and they would only minimally affect the story. And then there's the late revelation that one of our characters has a hidden secret identity, a revelation that fostered no setup. When the character looks into the camera to explain and ends with a curt, "Deal with it," it's like Grahame-Smith himself is speaking directly to the audience, mocking it for hoping that the movie would actually do a good job of setting up and paying off character development and relationships. Stupid audience. Why can't you just be happy with all that neat Tim Burton set design?

    The final melee between the Collins family and Angelique keeps reminding you of the dashed promise of the flick. Angelique, in her witchy withiness, summons dark forces to make statues come alive. Well, sort of. They flail their arms a tad. And then she makes the walls bleed. Well, sort of. The dripping blood stops after just a few inches from where it began. If you're going to make the house bleed, I want Shining-level torrents of the red stuff. The tonal inconsistency, matched with the muddled plot and scant character work, makes for a pretty frustrating bore of a movie.

    You could usually count on Depp (Alice in Wonderland) for at least committing himself to another bravura weird performance, but the material fails him. He's caked with alabaster makeup, given claw-like hands thanks to additional knuckles (why...?), and he's trying his best to transform a list of peculiarities into a character, but like most things concerning the movie, it does not coalesce properly. I actually think the most entertaining actor in the movie is Green (Casino Royale). Part of that might be my hormones revved up from her frequent cleavage-baring outfits as the vampy villainous (no pun intended). There's not much to her role but at least she has fun with it, bringing an admirable level of energy while her peers remain laconic, content to submerge into the 70s scenery. She shows a nice flair for comedy heretofore unseen. Strangely, Green adopts a slightly raspy voice that sounded like an imitation of, none other than, Helena Bonham Carter. If Burton's note to his film's young, frisky, sexy antagonist was, "Sound more like my wife doing an American accent," then I think we've butted into something personal best left between husband and wife.

    Ultimately, I have no idea who this movie is going to appeal to. The fans of the original soap will surely not be pleased with the jokey, tongue-in-cheek manner that Dark Shadows treats its source material. Fans of Burton's stylized, dreamy, Gothic fairy tale visuals will find the film tedious and a poor waste of the man's talents. Even the casual Depp fan will probably find the movie mostly unfunny, weird, and boring. The tonal whiplash never settles down, and the plot is replete with half-developed characters, ideas, and plot points. It just seems to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, but that's not the best way to tell a story. Not even Burton's visuals or Depp's performance can save this movie. Dark Shadows is unquestionably amongst Burton's worst films (2001's Planet of the Apes debacle takes the crown), made all the more inexplicable by the fact that Burton and Depp are self-described fans of the TV show. Maybe we all have different definitions of "fan" that I am not privy to. This movie deserves a quick death.

    Nate's Grade: C
  • aquateen2
    May 15, 2012
    aquateen2
    [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img]

    This is not in line with Burton's best work, there isn't a bigger example of him doing set piece over storytelling than what he does with Dark Shadows. But I still quite liked watching it, Depp's Barnabu... read mores Collins isn't as crazy as his Raoul Duke but he still makes an often funny character out of him. Bonham Carter on the other hand isn't very comedic but the film is kind of cute, and most of the time fun. Despite it's lack of a consistent tone and muddled narrative. It's miles away from his greatest weirdest work, it's more of an inbetween project to seperate Frankenweenie from Sweeney Todd, but it's got enough moments of eccentric laughs that make it feel more watchable than Burton's weak take on Alice in Wonderland. It's none other than a visual masterpiece but flimsy by Burton's incredibly high standards.

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Critic Reviews

Anthony Lane
May 15, 2012
Anthony Lane, New Yorker

This is not so much a coherent movie as it is a long, expensive joke in search of a purpose. Full Review

Lisa Kennedy
May 11, 2012
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

Mostly Dark Shadows is silly when we're trained to expect slightly richer fun from Burton and Depp. Full Review

Christopher Orr
May 11, 2012
Christopher Orr, The Atlantic

Fans of Depp's past collusions with Burton will find their rewards along the way. But there's a perfunctory vibe to the goings on, a weariness amid the weirdness. Full Review

Stephen Whitty
May 11, 2012
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

Clearly, they made the movie they wanted to make. It's just not the movie this "Dark Shadows" fan hoped to see. Full Review

Stephen Cole
May 11, 2012
Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail

Dark Shadows' only meaningful relationship is between Depp and his audience. He's a persona now, no longer an actor. Full Review

Tom Long
May 11, 2012
Tom Long, Detroit News

How bad is "Dark Shadows"? It makes you long for a "Twilight" movie. That's bad. Full Review

Lou Lumenick
May 11, 2012
Lou Lumenick, New York Post

"Dark Shadows'' certainly has its moments, especially when Barnabas and Angelique hilariously wreck her office during a surreal, CGI-fueled, PG-rated tryst. Full Review

Ann Hornaday
May 11, 2012
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

At once a brash, strutting pop culture pastiche and gloomy exercise in self-cannibalizing nostalgia, "Dark Shadows" is depressing on myriad levels. Full Review

Eric D. Snider
May 11, 2012
Eric D. Snider, Film.com

Can't decide whether it's a parody, a horror comedy, an atmospheric melodrama, or a tedious bucket of crap. Eventually it chooses the last one. Full Review

Mick LaSalle
May 10, 2012
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

When you consider all the pitfalls avoided, and all the laughs and pleasures it provides along the way, "Dark Shadows" is a satisfying and skillful effort. Full Review

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    • Barnabas Collins: Satan! Mock me not with your strange luminence.
    • Angelique: Sleeping flame I summonly to your form, return. Make the night as bright as day and Burn, baby, burn...
    • Barnabas Collins: [looks at his hands, skin, and fingernails changing, eyes bleeding] What have you done!
    • Angelique: [on top of Barnabas with her arms around him] Love me.
    • Barnabas Collins: Never! [rolls on floor holding Angelique. They make love all over her office]
    • Angelique Bouchard: I'm going to make you an offer, Barnabas. My last. You can join me by my side and we can run Collinsport together as partners, and lovers... or I'll put you back in the box.
    • Barnabas Collins: I have already prepared my counter-proposal. It reads thusly: You may strategically place your wonderful lips upon my posterior and kiss it repeatedly!
    • Barnabas Collins: What kind of sorcery is this? Reveal yourself, you tiny songstress!
    • Angelique: Burn, baby, burn!
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Dark Shadows Trivia

  • Name the series this music is from...  Answer »
  • In the movie Running With Scissors,what soap opera is Agnes Finch watching with Augusten?  Answer »
  • What is the name of the man who played Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows  Answer »
  • Who stars in Dark shadows?  Answer »
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