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!!

This is one of my favorite movies! Before I watched this, I had not seen the Dark Shadows soap opera, but I knew about it. I have since watched quite a lot of the series.

The 1 or 2 star reviews that say it's not like the series are right, but the original Dark Shadows had lots of flaws. It's a good thing this does not feel like a soap opera.

The visuals are wonderful, as usual with a Tim Burton production. Johnny Depp is a very funny and very likeable Barnabus Collins. Eva Green is wonderful, as is Michelle Pfeiffer, and all other castings are very well done. This does follow similar storylines as the old series.

Very entertaining, good situational comedy, and beautifully done.

If you like Tim Burton stuff, you will probably like this too!

What a waste of a seriously great cast.
It is incredible that anyone can manage to create such slop from this cast.
The material was always awful - even back in the day, Dan Curtis should have been ashamed!
Slow, cheesy, and badly directed - we ate it up - running home from school to get in front of the TV in time for the 4pm showing.
Watching Jonathan Frid drag the corpse that was that show around was like watching a road accident in progress.
This movie, for all the CGI, has not one bit of the cheesy charm of the original.
Miss this or waste your time with regret.

Dark Shadows was a 1970s cult classic TV show about the Collins family of Maine that included Barnabas Collins who was a vampire. Tim Burton made it into a dark comedy featuring Johnny Depp as Barnabas. It plays upon the dysfunctional Collins family and Barnabas attempting to adapt to the times.

The movie begins by laying out how all the people in the Collins family are eccentric. That means when Barnabas shows up he fits right in. The comedy comes from him trying to figure out the 1970s. For instance when he first returns he sees a McDonald’s sign and thinks the “M” stands for the demon Mephistopheles. Then he sees a car for the first time and thinks the headlights are the Devil come to take his soul. Instead it’s an American muscle car that just honks its horn at him for standing in the middle of the road.

The movie has the look of a typical Burton film with plenty of dark tones. Depp does a good job with the role and the out of place/out of time twist of Barnabas works.
C

I was a big DS fan when I was a kid, so I was anxious to see this movie. But it leaves me with the same question many of Tim Burton's films leave me with. Is this supposed to be a comedy or a drama? It really isn't funny enough to be a comedy, and it is too "campy" to be a drama. I guess Burton really isn't my cup of tea, except for the original _Batman_ with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That was a really good film, and Michael Keaton in that black turtleneck in the Batcave . . . be still, my heart. :-D

Danny Elfman is the only shinning part of this movie. He's the lead singer from band Oingo Bongo back in the 80's. He put together a good sound track for the movie. Other than this the movie sucks.

There is no continuity with the plot. The script has a few moments which are funny, but it can't make up its mind if it is a drama or a comedy. One moment it is serious, then it becomes a cartoon.

The character development is terrible. One moment the character has super powers, then the powers are taken away with our rhyme or reason. When needed, they throw something in to the mix just to keep the plot going just enough, but it lacks continuity. So you go from vampire with amazing powers, to a vampire that can't do anything. A witch with endless super powers, then a witch with out any powers. Need a werewolf? Throw one in at the end just to fill the empty spots. Need to end the movie? Sure, just end it because we are lazy.

People will say that this pays homage to the original tv series, but I find it to be a contemptuous. It is an insult to anything remotely related to that series.

I loved this movie when I first watched it years ago. It was a well acted and fun romp of a series that scared the bejezus out of me as a child and gave me nightmares. Johnny did a wonderful job in reimagining Barnabas Collins with dignity and compassion for the predicament he found himself in - being turned into a vampire.

However...

In the midst of the ongoing Depp/ Heard defamation trials in 2022, I found myself taking a deep breath at how parallel this storyline runs to Johnny Depp's own emotional and physical trauma in his relationship with Amber Heard being mirrored in the Barnabas Collins and the over-the-top controling witch, Angelique Bouchard, who pursues Barnabas and tries to force him to love her at any & all costs throughout the movie. It was beyond creepy just how much the patterns of love, control, and abuse mirrored one another between the fictional and real relationships. Johnny would have saved himself a lot of pain if he'd identified these patterns much earlier in his relationship with Amber!

When I saw this I was thrilled and wondered why it took me 9 years to find out it existed. As so many of my contemporaries, I watched the original series as a kid, even though my mom forbade me. She thought all soap operas were "trash," and she didn't want to have our young minds ruined. I just thought she wanted to spoil my fun. But, as kids will often do, I defied her and watched it at neighbor's houses. Every day after school, I excitedly sat wide-eyed in front of the black and white chilled to the bone at the horrors that befell the residents of Collinwood. I had a bit of a hard time remembering the characters, except for Barnabas, Angelic, Julia and David. The two things I didn't appreciate was the sex scene between Barnabas and Angelic, and Julia going "down on" Barnabas. Otherwise, I thought the humor/satire was very well done.