DARK SHADOWS (M) is Beetlejuice out of Sleepy Hollow and one of the funniest vampire films ever made.
Director Tim Burton is at the top of his game directing his muse Johnny Depp as the dapper Drac, Barnabas Collins, resurrected from his spell induced slumber cast in the late 18th century to contend with 1970s America.
Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith has enormous fun with both the man out of time components and the supernatural lore and conventions of the story. Depp as the count come lately is a dizzy delight.
In the nearly two hundred years Barnabas has been incarcerated in his subterraneous cell, a coffin clad solitary confinement, the Collins family has fallen on hard times.
The once profitable and privileged entrepreneurial fishing fleet family are floundering, collaterally damaged by the curse that turned Barnabas into a blood sucker.
The curse’s creator, Angelique, a witch spurned by Barnabas, is still alive and survives on the malevolence of seeing the Collins clan suffer. She is played with wanton wonder by the spellbindingly beautiful and fiendishly funny Eva Green. Here’s a witch to watch, and watch and watch, a witch to which to build a dream on.
Barnabas’s dysfunctional descendants are depicted by a dandy cast of droll characters – Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth, modern day matriarch of a motley crew; Chloe Grace Moretz as her not so dutiful daughter, Carolyn; Jonny Lee Miller as the miscreant Roger, embezzler, imbiber, and ingrate; and Gulliver McGrath as Roger’s heir, David, haunted by the ghost of his mother.
The household is also inhabited by Carolyn’s personal shrink, Dr. Hoffman, another lustrous performance by Helena Bonham Carter; David’s governess, Vicky, Bella Heathcote, and the family’s faithful retainer and inveterate inebriate, Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Hayley.
Tim Burton has conferred with long-time collaborators Composer Danny Elfman, Production Designer Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow) and Costume Designer Colleen Atwood (Oscar winner for Alice in Wonderland) to weave their magic and bring in a delectably detailed and textured film.
DARK SHADOWS is a deft mixture of horror and hilarity, a creepy comedy of manors; family fangster fun. Suck it and see!
(c) Richard Cotter
9th May, 2012
Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- DARK SHADOWS , Tim Burton, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter