Carolyn Stoddard (2012)

As portrayed by actress Chloe Grace Moretz in Tim Burton's 2012 film adaptation of Dark Shadows, Carolyn Stoddard is a 15-year-old heiress to the Collinwood mansion and what remains of the family's fishing business. Her drowsy, minimally articulate mannerisms in the film suggest she may be evidencing or simulating "stoner" behavior as part of her general attitude of teenage rebellion.

Carolyn is the second youngest of the four living Collinses in 1972 (when the film is predominantly set) and is the daughter of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the niece of Roger Collins, and the older cousin of young David Collins. She expresses teenaged disdain for David's claims to have conversations with the spirit of his mother, and is similarly dismissive of the supernatural and anachronistic quirks of her undead, newly unearthed vampiric "cousin" Barnabas Collins. But Carolyn has more in common with them than she wants to acknowledge.

[If you have not yet seen the film, plot details below may contain spoilers.]

The film portrays Carolyn as a somewhat typical (some might say stereotypical) "rebellious" teenager of the Vietnam War era, a time when the war, military draft, dramatically shifting social and cultural attitudes, exposure of government corruption, and other factors had produced a "generation gap" between many young people and their parents (as well as other traditional authority figures). Like many teenagers of the era, identifying with what was then considered a "counter-culture" partly defined by rejection of prior generations' values, Carolyn responds to virtually all others in the Collins household with a sneering, eye-rolling disrespect. However, when her family is truly threatened, Carolyn joins with them to fight back, in her own unique way.

In her first on-screen appearance, when she is introduced for the first time to Victoria Winters, David's newly arrived live-in goveness, Carolyn expresses momentary enthusiasm when she learns Vicky has come from New York. Seemingly in part to bait her mother, Carolyn reveals her plan - which Elizabeth dismisses as a "fantasy" - to relocate to Manhattan as soon as she turns 16. Despite Vicky's attempt to be friendly, Carolyn discourages her with the observation that none of David's prior teachers at Collinwood has lasted more than a week, and promptly slams her bedroom door, revealing a metal "Keep Out" sign prominently posted on its exterior.

Though it has little relevance to the events of the film, it is perhaps of passing interest that nothing at all is indicated of Carolyn's own education. At 15, she is still of school age and the October, 1972, timeframe is certainly set during a conventional school term, but it is clear that Vicky is only at Collinwood as David's teacher, not Carolyn's.

During Vicky's first meal with the Collins family, Carolyn puts on an LP record in the dining room and dances trippily to the song "Season of the Witch" (performed by Donovan Leitch) until her Uncle Roger angrily asks her in a demanding voice to turn it down. She switches it off and slumps into a chair, as if hopelessly bored, at the far end of the long dining table from everyone else. Carolyn, perhaps annoyed by the attention being paid to him, makes an unkind remark about her cousin David, and he casually retorts, "Carolyn touches herself. She makes sounds like a kitten."

After Barnabas Collins arrives at the mansion - 196 years after his vampiric metamorphosis and coffin-imprisonment by the film's villain, the witch Angelique Bouchard - Carolyn is similarly unwelcoming. Finding his 18th century mannerisms hopelessly uncool, she looks up from examining her Bobby Sherman teen pin-up magazine and scornfully mutters, "Are you stoned or something?" Later, she complains, "He's not going to stay with us forever, is he?"

Despite Carolyn's clear disdain for him (he is, after all, the epitome of past generations' outmoded attitudes), Barnabas nonetheless turns to her for advice in his attempt to woo Victoria, who reminds him of his lost love Josette duPres. Visiting Carolyn's bedroom - apparently within the circular tower of Collinwood - Barnabas perches upon Carolyn's beanbag chair and counsels her that, at 15 years of age, she may soon be left a "spinster" if she doesn't soon mate ("make good use of those birthing hips!"). Carolyn, understandably, snarls, "You're weird."

Carolyn's bedroom is outfitted with typical teenage bedroom decor of the era - psychadelic rock music posters, a lava lamp (which the out-of-touch Barnabas describes as a "pulsating blood urn"), swag carpeting, a rattan swinging "egg" chair, etc. (Earlier in the film, Barnabas has encountered and been puzzled by a plastic, fuzzy-headed "troll doll" which more than likely belongs to Carolyn and an Operation game that may be hers or David's.)

Though Vicky is closer to her own age than any of the other adults at Collinwood, Carolyn tells Barnabas, "She [Vicky] likes to think she's all rock'n'roll, but she's definitely a Carpenters kind of chick." (While she clearly means this as a putdown, Carolyn herself is shown watching a performance of The Carpenters' "Top of the World" on a television console during a montage scene depicting Collinwood's renovation earlier in the film.)

It is as a result of Carolyn's counsel to "hang out with some regular people" in order to seem less "weird" to Victoria, that Barnabas spends an evening around a campfire with a marijuana-smoking tribe of smiling hippies whom he then, remorsefully, kills for their blood.

It is also Carolyn's (sarcastically intentioned) suggestion that leads Barnabas to hire Alice Cooper ("the ugliest woman I've ever seen!") to perform at a party at the newly refurbished Collinwood mansion. (Barnabas initially refers to the party as a "ball," but Carolyn insists they should call "a happening.")

Barnabas proposes the party as a way to help revive the Collins family's reputation with the townspeople of Collinsport, celebrating the revival he has instigated in the family's fishing business and the renovations at Collinwood. However, the frustrated witch Angelique resents these initially successful efforts and (once again, as she had in 1776 when she'd imposed Barnabas' vampire curse) leads an angry mob to Collinwood for a confrontation with the Collinses.