Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is a beautiful and melancholic animation which portrays a romantic fairytale story with a very dark twist.
Johnny Depp voices Victor, a young bachelor whose rich parents have arranged for him to marry Victoria (Emily Watson), the daughter of a poor, aristocratic couple.
Stunned by Victoria's beauty and too shy to speak the marriage vows, Victor escapes to a graveyard where he accidentally puts the wedding ring on the bony finger of Emily, a corpse bride (Helena Bonham Carter).
Victor is dragged to the corpse bride's world of the dead while Victoria is forced by her parents to marry Barkis - a sinister man who claims to be a distant relative.
Marrying a rotting corpse - albeit a beautiful one - is a morbid idea. The excellent animation lends a fairytale quality to the dark tale.
Co-directors Tim Burton and Mike Johnson juxtapose cute with creepy, love with death, and beauty with maggots to create an entertaining animation that is both hauntingly beautiful and deadly funny.