Film

Less an evening’s entertainment than a glittering bear trap, Stephen Sondheim’s subversive 1979 Broadway triumph bristled with the composer’s spikiest dissonances. By the end of the first half, a vengeful serial killer was happily twirling with the woman who baked his victims into meat pies. By curtain, all of London seemed charred by apocalyptic fire: sick with amorality and, it’s safe to say, indigestion.

Much of that musical is here—smartly condensed, if slightly less sooty, under the pop-gothic glare of Tim Burton. For that unlikely outcome alone, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street merits a nod, and not just from the Saw crowd. (Brace yourself for multiple neck slashings.) As is his wont, Burton has cast Johnny Depp, and per the actor’s usual resourcefulness, Depp has turned Todd into a seething, spitting Hammer horror, more punk than prog. Whereas in Ed Wood, it felt like both collaborators were finally revealing something under the makeup, Todd, with his Sontag shock-stripe, is the peak of their stylized menace. He’s a scream.

Given the towering stature of the musical, one can’t help but wince at errant nicks. Helena Bonham Carter is porcelain and lovely as always, but hardly the brassy presence needed to persuasively draw this monster out of his cage; you don’t have to know the classic stage turn by Angela Lansbury to feel something’s slightly out of whack. Sacha Baron Cohen owns his brief comic role as Todd’s faux-Italian competitor, but where is baddie Alan Rickman’s customary fire? Still, Burton does more than just deliver, and even if you wish he’d sharpened his instruments a little longer, the shave is bracing.