Tagline: Every Family Has Its Demons
Synopsis: Director Tim Burton brings the cult classic series "Dark Shadows" to the big screen in a film featuring an all-star cast, led by Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter. In the year 1750, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from England to start a new life in America, where they build a fishing empire in the coastal Maine town that comes to carry their name: Collinsport. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of falling in love with a beauty named Josette DuPres (Bella Heathcote) and 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. Nearly two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972, a stranger in an even stranger time. Returning to Collinwood Manor, he finds that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin, and the dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the one person Barnabas entrusts with the truth of his identity. But his rather odd and anachronistic behavior immediately raises the suspicions of the live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who has no idea what kind of problems she’s really digging up. As Barnabas sets out to restore his family name to its former glory, one thing stands in his way: Collinsport’s leading denizen, who goes by the name Angie…and who bears a striking resemblance to a very old acquaintance of Barnabas Collins. Also residing in Collinwood Manor are Elizabeth’s ne’er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloë Grace Moretz); and Roger’s precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gully McGrath). The longsuffering caretaker of Collinwood is Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley), and new to the Collins’ employ is David’s nanny, Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote), who is, mysteriously, the mirror image of Barnabas’ one true love, Josette. [Synopsis courtesy of official site]
Critics let the fur fly when they unleash their scorn on the year's worst movies, the dregs at the bottom of the barrel, the flicks that really waste their time. For your reading pleasure we present an assortment of "Worst Movies of the Year" lists. Our own is right here.
Read More »With "Frankenweenie" hitting theaters this weekend, and already riding on some very good reviews, it seems Tim Burton will be able to wash away the foul taste left in the mouths of his fans by "Dark Shadows." This summer's vampire comedy tale, based on an obscure TV show, ultimately did decent busin...
Read More »So “The Avengers” knocked it out of the park, huh? With a $600 million intake worldwide and lots and lots of good reviews, Joss Whedon and the folks over at Marvel can probably even one-up James Cameron at the next Masters of the Hollywood Universe fete. (That sounds fun, doesn’t it? I’d go to a par...
Read More »While the multiplex explodes this weekend with superheroes emerging out of every cinematic orifice, next week the blockbuster movie leading the pack will be quite a different beast altogether. A vampire and a witch will battle it out in the 1970s in the high concept fantasy/horror/comedy hybrid "Dar...
Read More »We've had an inkling thus far that "Dark Shadows" would be a return to form for both Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, whose batting average over their last few films -- "Alice In Wonderland," "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," "Charlie and the Chocola...
Read More »It makes sense that for Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton to get in on the current vampire craze, they’d have to approach it with a sense of humor. I doubt if many young viewers know that they’ve based their new film on a forty-year-old daytime TV drama, and it scarcely matters. Dark S...
Read More »Amidst a solid weekend of new releases, "Sleepless Night" and "Under African Skies" lead the way with the highest averages.
Read More »Warner Bros.' trailer for Tim Burton's eighth collaboration with Johnny Depp, "Dark Shadows," had me salivating for a witty 70s romp at the movies. And the movie looks and sounds great, with a witty Danny Elfman 70s score and a strong cast. So why is the film such an enervating disappointment?
Read More »“Dark Shadows” is not the worst movie that Tim Burton has ever made, but that’s only because there’s nothing worse than “Alice in Wonderland.” A desperate jumble of ideas in search of deeper substance, much less focus, Burton’s latest collaboration with actor Johnny Depp is the latest, and perhaps g...
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