Four of my favorite actors; Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter and Eva Green are in this movie and they are the reason I watched it for the first time. But I should start this review by saying I was very young when the original series was first broadcasted and I could only recall a scant amount of snippets of the original soap series but because of those memories I gave this movie a chance. A few years after having watched it I've read accounts online about how some hated this movie. There was a lot of criticism about the choice of actors and about the script and the acting. Personally I enjoyed this movie, though at the time I first watched this movie I had yet to order the original series on DVD which I had begun to do late last year. I can understand some of the criticisms of this movie after watching collections 1 through 8 of the original series so far, yet as a "stand alone", "Dark Shadows" is a fun and satirical movie and yes because of our current technology it does veer away from the low budget original (which I thoroughly love!!) and even though some didn't appreciate that, it makes sense that it would have to in order to condense portions of the storyline of some 200 plus episodes of the original series into an approx. two-hour long movie. No current actors could ever replace Fridd, Bennett, Edmonds, Moltke, Barrett, Crothers, Karlen, Scott, Hall or any of the other original actors and that really goes without saying but all in all this movie was fun to watch. I really enjoyed it!! I recommend this movie as a sort of "1rst cousin, twice removed" of the original series!!