Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2012
The Gothic TV cult fave of the early ‘70s was pretty out there for its day. Now Tim Burton and Johnny Depp turn it up to 11. Barnabas Collins (Depp) was in 1772 the scion of a successful Maine fisheries family in colonial America. He made the grievous mistake of spurning the love of a witch (a marvelous Eva Green), who retaliated by causing his true love to jump to her death, turning him into a vampire and burying him in a coffin. Two hundred years later he escapes to discover a world of lava lamps and The Carpenters, and vows to return glory to his family, now reduced by the witch (still around) to a dysfunctional shadow of its former self. It’s as delightfully twisted as any Burton film and offers up a steady parade of sight gags and other humor that I don’t think was in the TV show, which was essentially a weird soap opera (and unseen by me). It does sag in a few places, but not for long, and as usual Depp makes the material shine. Unique supernatural sex scene. Great cast includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter and Chloe Grace Moretz.
