Every movie Tim Burton makes is a haunted mansion: a Gothic pile full of
hidden passageways, veiled secrets, and ghosts swinging from the
chandeliers. Collinwood, the family mansion in Dark Shadows, is
therefore a Burton playground, and the proper centerpiece for this daffy
adaptation of the cult '60s TV soap opera. For Burton's version, the
angst-ridden vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp--were you really
expecting someone else?) is exhumed after a 200-year burial at the hands
of local witch and disappointed lover Angelique (Eva Green, Casino Royale).
The year is 1972, so--after the nicely antique prologue and the
suitably creepy arrival of fresh-faced nanny Victoria Winters (Bella
Heathcote) to Collinwood--the film shifts gears to allow for campy gags
about Barnabas and his initial encounters with McDonald's signs and
women's lib. Burton is incorrigible about that blend of Mad magazine-style spoofery and his very real affection for the gauzy tropes of horror movies, and while Dark Shadows rarely solves the disconnect between those tones, it certainly is silly and fun on its own terms.
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