Previously, from the Oeuvre
Seen:
Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish
Not Seen:
Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie, Big Eyes, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Dumbo
What's the Deal
I've just never been a fan of creepy, you know? Say "Tim Burton," and my brain conjures up a Johnny Depp in white pancake makeup stabbing people and I think we're all past that stage in our lives. Then again, I've enjoyed the Burton films I have seen (except Edward Scissorhands, obvs).
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, 11 December 2021, streamed via HBO Max
I know this is crying out for comparisons to The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I never watched that film either, so.
Wait, this is a MUSICAL?!
Victor's parents are super-rich. Victoria's parents are noble but poor. Time for an arranged marriage! (I will once again mention that I'm not opposed to arranged marriages when all parties have appropriate foreknowledge.) Victoria seems quite optimistic. Victor seems mostly freaked out?
Victor absolutely bungles the wedding rehearsal. He runs out to the forest to practice his vows and, like, accidentally marries a corpse. If I've said it once, I'll say it again: Always make sure you're putting your jewelry on branches, not skeletal hands sprung from the earth.
Then it's off to the underworld with Victor! In a nice bit, the underworld is punctuated with lively color in contrast to the monochrome of the world above.
Apparently the eponymous corpse bride, Emily, was murdered while she was on her way to elope. Since then, she's just been moldering under a tree waiting for a groom to retrieve her. Victor, naturally, makes a break for it. When she brings him the remains of his dog, Scraps, however, he settles down a bit.
It's not that he's content in the underworld, though. Victor, in an attempt to get back to Victoria, convinces Emily and some gatekeeper wizard dude that he wants to introduce her to his parents who are, y'know, still alive.
Poor Emily. Poor, willfully ignorant Emily. When she catches Victor with Victoria, she drags him back to the underworld.
Apparently Victoria's parents are in such dire financial straits that they decide to marry her off to Lord Barkis, one of the guests at the wedding rehearsal, immediately! What the hell! (This, after Victoria asks a priest for help about her fiance's undead problem and he just hauls her back to her parents' manor.) One of Victor's coachmen dies and delivers the news to Victor.
Victor, heartbroken, consents to marry Emily. One thing, though--they'd have to go back up top so that Victor can die. By drinking poison. Buddy. This escalated quickly.
At the last minute, however, Emily changes her mind! She doesn't want to steal Victor from the woman he really loves!
Barkis wants to marry Victoria because he believes she's rich! AND HE KILLED EMILY. WHAT THE HELL. There's some swordplay, then Barkis accidentally drinks the poison. SUCK IT, BARKIS. NOW THE DEAD TAKE THEIR VENGEANCE.
And then this. THIS.
This is where the movie ends, happily ever after, curtain closes, THANKS GUYS GOOD NIGHT.
Frankenweenie, 11 December 2021, streamed via Disney+
I think I saw previews for this way back at San Diego Comic-Con? It feels quite familiar, but I know I've never watched it. Anyway, another film that features an undead puppy!
Burton's animated characters look dead from the jump and it's confusing. Here we have young Victor Frankenstein (ahhhhhhh) and his dog Sparky. (Um, Victor from Corpse Bride had a dog called Scraps? Tim, my boy, we've gotta talk.) His next door neighbor is Elsa Van Helsing and YOU GUYS is this another stab-maiden, because I will plotz.
The town of New Holland is WILD. Check out this classroom of mad scientists-to-be.
At the urging of his parents, Victor tries playing baseball. When he hits a ball out of the park, Sparky chases it out into the road.
You see where this is going.
There's a class on electricity and galvanizing frogs, and just as with Mary Shelley, Victor is inspired.
I guess this is a beautiful story about a boy and his dog, but there's something extra disturbing about watching a boy drag a dead body across his living room, crouched down so his parents won't see.
I couldn't find a clip of it, but there's a two-second bit of Victor's mother walking down stairs in heels, without her hands free, and the way she sets her feet down is exactly how women walk down stairs like that. It's such a tiny detail, but it was actually pretty disconcerting, given how caricatured everything else is.
When Sparky gets loose in the neighborhood, he gets spotted. And before you know it, Victor's being blackmailed to teach Edgar how to raise the dead. Like you do.
The science fair's coming up, see, and the kids are starting to get intense about it. Bob and Toshiaki test out a bottle rocket; Bob breaks his arm during the experiment. Naturally, this leads to the mayor firing the science teacher. Parents start freaking out--why are their children asking questions? Why isn't Pluto a planet?! The science teacher probably doesn't help his case by declaring the entire country small-minded and incurious.
I'm uncomfortable that the one character who's visibly a specific ethnicity also speaks with a strong accent, is intensely ambitious, and cares nothing about other people's pain.
Anyway, once Victor's experiments come out, things get out of control.
Don't worry, though, after the vampire cat gets impaled, the townspeople revive a dead-again Sparky with their car batteries. It's…sweet, I think.
There better be an undead dog in the next movie is all I'm saying.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, 11 December 2021, streamed via Disney+
I haven't read the novel by Ransom Riggs, so I wasn't sure what to expect of this film. It's way more sci-fi than I expected, honestly.
Jake, a kid in Florida, goes to visit his grandfather and finds the house wrecked and his grandfather dead, his eyes gouged out. He tells Jake to get away, "Go to the loop. September 3rd, 1943." He sees a shape loom behind his friend, Shelley, and then we cut to a month later.
Jake's grandfather used to tell him stories of his time at Miss Peregrine's home, a home for special children. His family had to flee Poland because of monsters–but over time, it was easy enough for Jake to translate "monsters" into "Nazis," etc.
To find closure, of some sort, Jake and his dad travel to Wales, to the children's home. Apparently the home was bombed on the date his grandfather told him, and all of its inhabitants died.
Except, when he goes back to the ruins, the children are there.
WHAT.
And then Jake's suddenly in 1943.
WHAT.
Eva Green is Miss Peregrine, which tells us that some fucked-up stuff is gonna happen sooner rather than later. Or now, really–Peregrine's power is being able to manipulate time. She rewinds every day so that nobody ever changes and nothing ever intrudes. (OR DOES IT.)
Then everything's kind of X-Men, but claustrophobic and creepy. There is a boy filled with bees, guys, I was almost out right then. Don't even get me started on the kid who can animate dolls.
So, like, you can just step in and out of a time loop if you know the way. You can leave the loop behind and grow older and have a life. The reset of the day is nuts, though--they all don gas masks and watch the bombing of the town begin, then everything goes backwards.
Then there's a bunch of dead sheep.
When Jake goes back to 1943, it turns out the kid who can animate dolls can also reanimate the dead. The dead kid is named Victor, but there's no sign of a dog named, like, Sharky yet.
There's an extremely cool scene where Emma and Jake go hang out in the ocean. What a killer this must have been to film.
Oh, Jake's Peculiar power? The same as his grandfather's: To see invisible monsters called Hollowgasts, who eat Peculiar eyes in order to transform into the more human-like wights.
There are many scenes of dudes eating eyeballs.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
The wights, unfortunately, find the 1943 loop. (Samuel L Jackson is having the time of his life.) Miss Peregrine gets kidnapped and Jake gets trapped in 1943--though he does get to have a quick phone conversation with his not-yet-grandfather, which is really sweet.
"I just wanted to tell you that I miss you, and if I disappointed you, I'm sorry. And you're the best grandpa in the world." (Imagine hearing this over the phone when you're only 19, though.)
Handily, they know Miss Peregrine will be taken to Blackpool–which is also where the nearest time loop is, and that one's set to Jake's own time, 2016.
Barron spends a little time ranting at the other wights about having to spend three weeks in Florida as a therapist, and then three days pretending to look at birds in Wales. He's got some intense dot com CEO energy happening, too.
Hey, did anyone else notice the only non-White person in this story is the villain played by Samuel L Jackson? That's…not great.
There's a crazy superpower battle, but the kids manage to rescue Miss Peregrine before they get caught in 2016. (Since they're native to 1943, staying too long in 2016 would mean the intervening years would catch up with them with a wallop.) While they have to sail off, killing Barron in the past (kind of) means Barron never kills Jake's grandfather!
And handily, Jake's grandfather has a map of all the time loops in the world. Jake and Emma get to smooch!
Though, Emma's going to be forever 15 or whatever? Unless Peregrine has them travel a few more years, so the older kids can achieve adulthood?
The Bottom Line
I deliberately picked the least creepy ones, y'all. And for multiple reasons, I'm never going to watch the murdery ones, partly for the murdery parts and partly because of Johnny Depp. But I didn't hate these, which is a nice feeling.
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