Director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp team up for an eighth time in this characteristically gothic comedy.
After spurning lover, and witch, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) for his true love Josette (Bella Heathcote), Barnabas Collins (Depp) is cursed to live forever - as a vampire. Buried alive in a locked coffin, it is almost 200 years before a team of construction workers accidentally resurrects him, in 1970s New England.
Freed from his would-be grave, Barnabas returns to his old mansion to find his own dysfunctional descendants living there. When family matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) agrees Barnabas can stay, he makes efforts to try to revitalise the Collins' ailing business. But the ancient bloodsucker is distracted by the house governess, who looks just like Josette, and by Angelique, who has arrived on the scene with a rival business and a burning desire to win Barnabas back.
Depp and Burton's latest collaboration retains the distinctive feel and snappily humorous narrative that audiences have come to expect from the pair.
In a cast that also includes Chloë Grace Moretz and Jonny Lee Miller, Bonham Carter continues her streak of appearing in husband's Burton's films, and is great fun as the family's live-in psychiatrist Julia Hoffman.
With camp humour, soapy storylines and Burton's trademark eye-catching visuals, Dark Shadows proves a fun diversion.
Dark Shadows is a Film programme that first aired in 2012 and has been classified a 12 certificate.
