I know, I know, I’ve told you I’m excited for The Avengers and Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises (among others), I’ve even told you I’m excited about Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, but let me just say it again. I’m really really excited about Dark Shadows!
We have a new UK trailer to share (thanks to our friends HeyUGuys), and while it does seem to emphasize the comedy, everything I’m reading leads me to believe that Burton has found the balance I’d hoped for. I’m not sure why the marketing campaign seems to be leaning so heavily on the humor, but apparently the movie is in fact a good mix of comedy and horror. The film culminates in a “bloody battle”. I don’t want to get too spoilery, but that sounds about right. I’d really hate it if Burton had drained the blood vampire Barnabas Collins. I think a lot of the credit will eventually go to writer Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, another Burton collaboration.
Johnny Depp is of course Barnabas Collins (and I still say he’s a mix of Edward Scissorhands and Max Schreck) and he looks like he’s having a blast. The film also stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Bella Heathcote, Chloe Moretz and Gulliver McGrath.
In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (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 grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (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. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles. Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth’s ne’er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Moretz); and Roger’s precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) and David’s new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.
Dark Shadows opens in the US and the UK on May 11.
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