It was only a matter of time before Johnny Depp played a vampire, and he plays a pretty good one in director Tim Burton's latest movie about the undead, "Dark Shadows." As Barnabas Collins, Depp gives another fun, outlandish performance as a vampire in the wrong century, though the movie itself doesn't really have anywhere to go and ends up wasting an interesting character that deserved a better movie. For anyone familiar with on-screen vampires (and who isn't these days?), "Dark Shadows" is a predictable bit of light horror that provides a few good laughs and a whole lot of stuff we've seen done before. When the easiest movie to compare it to might just be "Encino Man," we're not talking about Depp and Burton's crowning achievement.
"Dark Shadows" begins all the way back in the late 18th century, the era that was supposed to be the only one that Barnabas Collins would ever see. As part of a very wealthy English family now living in Maine, Barnabas lives a life of privilege looking down on a small fishing village called Collinsport in his family's honor. Barnabas' future is very bright until he spurns Angelique (Eva Green), a jealous servant girl with a secret passion for life-ruining spells. Soon, after a tragic turn of events, Barnabas has lost his parents, his true love and his mortality, which Angelique was able to do with only a few little magic tricks. If only he had loved her instead of the beautiful Josette (Bella Heathcote), he would have never been turned into a vampire and buried indefinitely, but hindsight is 20/20.
Flash-forward to 1972. When a construction crew accidentally stumbles upon Barnabas' coffin, suddenly he's unleashed and left to return to the not so humble castle of his human life. But the castle isn't some forgotten fortress filled with cobwebs and haunting spirits, as distant relatives are still holding down the fort some 200 years after it was built. Instead of the Addams family, we get a mostly normal group of people struggling with living in near isolation. For Barnabas, just like the audience, the early 1970s is a strange reality filled with lava lamps and pitiful box TVs that only get a single channel.
Of the family, the rebellious teenager Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz) is the most interesting, a girl who wants to truly experience the 70s but instead rots in a room with Jimi Hendrix posters and Black Sabbath records. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the matriarch Elizabeth, married to a louse of a husband who assumed it would be a lot cooler to marry into a prominent Maine family. Then there's Victoria (also played by Bella Heathcote), a smart but troubled young woman who has a unique ability to conjure up messages from spirits. Helena Bonham Carter (another Burton regular) also plays a boozy psychiatrist who is doing a terrible job at helping young David (Gulliver McGrath).
But Barnabas has his own problems outside of assimilating with the new Collins family. With nearly two centuries to make plans, Barnabas wants to restore the family fishing business and that means going toe-to-toe with Angelique, who has taken over as the biggest fish in Collinsport. She may be portrayed by beautiful French actress Eva Green, who can play a sultry evil witch in her sleep, but she's still the enemy.
With the battle lines clearly drawn, the movie only has one real path to go, and "Dark Shadows" creeps from one vampire/witch battle to the next without much creativity. Burton once again supplies a gothic vision complete with endless fog and unnerving settings, but the plot doesn't have a sense of urgency and the action that takes place is completely devoid of consequences - until the very end, of course. Though it's funny to see Depp waddling around as an ignorant vampire, there isn't enough of a story to keep up with his awkward meandering.
Even with a ho-hum plot, though, it's with the other characters that "Dark Shadows" has its biggest problem, as they're mainly left there to play off Barnabas instead of building their own stories. As Elizabeth Collins, Michelle Pfeiffer looks like she belongs in a grim Tim Burton movie, but she has an almost completely irrelevant part to play and doesn't exactly come off as the sharpest tack. When she realizes that Barnabas is an actual vampire, her plan is to just bring him into the family and hope that nobody notices. He may sleep hanging upside down and look exactly like a vampire, but Elizabeth figures that the kids just won't pick up on these things. Even for a movie about vampires, witches, evil spells and werewolves, some of the logic in "Dark Shadows" is difficult to swallow.
There have been countless movies and TV series about vampires by now, and to pull off one like "Dark Shadows" would have required bringing something new to the table. Though there are a couple good gags about Barnabas being in the wrong century, the final act is so predictable and bland that even Johnny Depp and Eva Green can't save it. By the time Barnabas starts to get a handle on his new era, we've gone through just about every joke there is, from his befuddlement over motorized cars to believing that rock star Alice Cooper has to be the ugliest woman he's ever seen. Maybe Barnabas should head back to his coffin and try again in the 80s, though hair bands and legwarmers probably won't be any easier to comprehend.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.