Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Johnny Depp | ... | Barnabas Collins | |
Michelle Pfeiffer | ... | Elizabeth Collins Stoddard | |
Helena Bonham Carter | ... | Dr. Julia Hoffman | |
Eva Green | ... | Angelique Bouchard | |
Jackie Earle Haley | ... | Willie Loomis | |
Jonny Lee Miller | ... | Roger Collins | |
Bella Heathcote | ... | Victoria Winters / Josette DuPres | |
Chloë Grace Moretz | ... | Carolyn Stoddard | |
Gulliver McGrath | ... | David Collins (as Gully McGrath) | |
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Ray Shirley | ... | Mrs. Johnson |
Christopher Lee | ... | Clarney | |
Alice Cooper | ... | Alice Cooper | |
Ivan Kaye | ... | Joshua Collins | |
Susanna Cappellaro | ... | Naomi Collins | |
Josephine Butler | ... | David's Mother |
In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet-or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth ... Written by Warner Bros. Pictures
Lets be frank. If you had a dime for every time Hollywood took something dusty and old, and tried to turn it into something shiny and new, you could retire.
In fact, most of these attempts barely work. But (having seen this one front to back three times since its first release) I believe this is an exception and moreover I believe that viewers have become so jaded to these attempts that they instinctively rebelled against the film (hence the low rating) without even giving it a chance.
The script by Seth Grahame-Smith is witty and clever and engaging. And wonderfully demented. The cast is to die for. Eva Green and Johnny Depp are at the peak of their craft, delivering with a straight face bits of dialog that lesser actors would choke on. The supporting cast (almost all A-list with a young Chloë Grace Moretz) is rock solid.
Overall a delightfully deranged yet still entertaining exercise in being silly -- which is exactly what Hollywood aims for in these odd exercises.
The IMDb rating is much too low. Give it another chance.