A Halloween Special: My Top-Five Favourite Films Directed by Tim Burton.
- Scott Barnard
- 10 hours ago
- 9 min read
Today is Halloween and I’d like to celebrate a filmmaker that’s contributed more to this festive season than any other - Tim Burton.
Few filmmakers have created worlds as unmistakably their own as Tim Burton. His films are not merely stories but extensions of his imagination - instantly recognisable through their gothic architecture, crooked landscapes, melancholic charm, stripes and spirals, factories, dogs, and big eyes filled with wonder. His films are destigishable through his frequent collaborators: Johnny Depp, Danny Elfman, Colleen Atwood, Rock Heinrichs. They help create worlds that feel gothic and whimsical - a theatre of melancholy and mischief. Burton’s work blends darkness with playfulness, turning the eerie into the endearing and the grotesque into something deeply human.
What makes his cinema unique is not just his visual style, but the way he continually subverts familiar tropes. The monster becomes the innocent; the suburban home becomes the source of horror; the hero, often an outsider, finds strength in vulnerability. Beneath the exaggerated forms and whimsical absurdity lies a deep empathy for misfits who feel out of place in the ordinary world. His characters rarely conquer evil in the traditional sense; instead, they survive by embracing their difference.
It’s Burton’s original visions, not his reimaginings (Planet of the Apes, Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman), that stand as his best work. His unique films are those that are original and full of imagination, where his personal obsessions and stylistic fingerprints are most visible. Here are my top five favourite Burton-directed films, in order. What makes these films so remarkable is not just their visual creativity or originality, but Burton’s subversion of cinematic tropes - his ability to take something familiar (like a ghost story, a monster film, or a sci-fi invasion) and turn it upside down.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Edward Scissorhands is a robot film unlike any other. Burton’s creation is a mechanical man, melancholic and pale in goth attire who looks as if he’s just stepped out of a Cure concert, played perfectly by a young Johnny Depp. His performance, reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s silent-era, and baby-like innocence and wonder, makes Edward both machine and child. The film’s setting, a pastel suburbia of cookie-cutter houses and gossiping neighbours, contrasts sharply with Edward’s dark, ornate origins in the inventor’s factory in a crumbling mountain top gothic mansion on the edge of town. Edward’s orphanhood, left alone and isolated with a cookie for a heart, evokes empathy and compassion, while the film’s subversion of tropes (a robot as both tragic hero and romantic lead) distinguishes it from the usual speculative-fiction narrative. Though clearly inspired by gothic horror, it remains a wholly original fable and is the most unique and heartfelt story of Burton’s career. Here Burton subverts multiple tropes:
The Frankenstein myth is rewritten as a tragic romance, with the scientist’s “monster” becoming the most human character in the story.
The robot narrative, often about cold logic or rebellion, becomes a fable about sensitivity and creativity.
The suburban ideal is inverted - it is not the outsider who is dangerous, but conformity itself.
Motifs we’ve come to associate with Burton are everywhere: loneliness, alienation, dogs (so many dogs!), stripes, gothic architecture, gothic aesthetic, crooked doorways and gnarly objects, factories, big eyes, and sympathy for the misunderstood. The film’s subversion of these tropes makes it a profoundly original work - one that exposes the cruelty hidden beneath normality and finds beauty in the abnormal.
Beetlejuice (1988)
Burton transforms horror into comedy and the macabre into delight. His visual trademarks - model village, black-and-white stripes, crooked and gnarled objects and landscapes, and stop-motion animation - give the film a carnival quality and a visual language viewers instantly recognise as Tim Burton’s. Beetlejuice isn’t just about ghosts; it’s about belonging, and the humour that can exist within darkness. That balance between horror and playfulness would become one of Burton’s great signatures, later echoed in his films such as: The Nightmare Before Christmas and Wednesday. There’s even a little Jack Skellington head in Beetlejuice, seen on top of the merry-go-round, which also echoes Burton’s previous film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. We also see the red and green skeletons from Mars Attacks! A ghost movie unlike any other, Beetlejuice turns the haunted-house genre inside out: here, ghosts haunt other ghosts. The result was a cultural phenomenon that spawned an animated series, video games, a musical, a sequel (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) almost forty years after the first film released, and enduring Halloween iconography.
Michael Keaton’s outrageous performance as “The Ghost with the Most” cemented Beetlejuice as one of cinema’s most beloved grotesques. Alongside him, Winona Ryder’s, Lydia, embodies the Burton archetype as the misunderstood gothic outsider. Their performances, along with Catherine O’Hara’s and Jeffrey Joness (all of them frequent actors in Tim Burton films) make Beetlejuice visually and tonally chaotic in the best way. It’s Keaton’s performance though that brings this film about dead people to life. His character has stayed iconic for four decades and people still wear Beetlejuice costumes trick or treating and to parties on Halloween.
Tim Burton turns horror movie ghost tropes on their head in Beetlejuice. Instead of frightened humans terrorised by supernatural forces, he gives us hilarious ghosts, and a bewildered couple, trying to reclaim their home from grotesque modern yuppies. This inversion of expectation is quintessentially Burtonesque:
Even death is reimagined: the afterlife is bureaucratic, absurd, and as full of paperwork as the real world.
The villain isn’t the ghosts haunting the house but the family that moves in.
** Tim Burton’s impact on Halloween culture cannot be overstated - Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie, and The Nightmare Before Christmas have all become seasonal staples. Jack Skellington has become synonymous with the ancient Celtic festival, with stores and houses decorated with merchandise from the iconic Disney musical. But it began here, with Beetlejuice, a film that proved the macabre could also be joyful.
Beetlejuice even has sandworms in it and Lydia rides one of them, which pays homage to David Lynch’s Dune, though in Burton’s, his sand worms are striped black and white and brought to life with stop-motion animation reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen. The sandworms in both films thematically represent a control of chaos. It’s all playful intertextuality that is iconic for Tim Burton - alongside his affinity for genre mashups (Edward Scissorhands was a science-fiction gothic-horror gothic-romance fairytale suburban satire. Beetlejuice fuses fantasy supernatural horror comedy and drama.) Burton’s playfulness, fusion of genres, intertextuality and textuality - make his films unique.
Ed Wood (1994)
With Ed Wood, Burton crafts a loving biopic of Hollywood’s most infamous “bad director.” It’s a film about filmmaking and shot in luminous black and white - a radical choice in the 1990s after decades of colour movies and television - but by doing so pays homage to the low-budget B-movie era of the 1950s. Ed Wood celebrates artistic passion and pursuit, but also artistic failure. Johnny Depp’s buoyant performance captures the enthusiasm and delusion of its subject, while Burton’s affection for outsider figures reaches its peak.
The film also features Burton’s then-partner, Lisa Marie, as Vampira, sparking the auteur’s tendency to cast his muses: Lisa Marie would feature in four films (and be Burton’s muse for the character, Sally, in The Nightmare Before Christmas), Helena Bonham Carter would be in seven, while Monica Bellucci would be in one.
Ed Wood one of Burton’s most human films, celebrating the creative spirit even in the face of ridicule. Here Burton subverts several cinematic conventions:
The biopic of the artist is traditionally about triumph or redemption. Burton’s Ed Wood never achieves either, yet his passion and optimism are portrayed as heroic.
The Hollywood satire is softened into an affectionate portrait of outsiders, dreamers, and misfits.
Wood’s cross-dressing, which might be ridiculed in other films, is depicted with empathy and sincerity.
Through these subversions, Ed Wood becomes one of Burton’s most compassionate works. It celebrates the strange, the unsuccessful, and the unloved. The result is both a tribute to the outsider and a defence of creative sincerity in a cynical world.
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Following Ed Wood, Burton turned from celebrating B-grade filmmakers to making his own B-grade science-fiction film. It has all the Tim Burton trademarks you’d expect and it also has the twisted Christmas element, though not as prominent as that in Edward Scissorhands, Batman, and The Nightmare Before Christmas; in Mars Attacks!, when the aliens obliterate people, their human skeletons turn either red or green, the colours of Christmas (and the time of year the film released). The aliens are also red and green coloured to make it more of a “Christmas movie”. Mars Attacks! is a wild, anarchic satirical science-fiction comedy, brimming with absurdity and celebrity cameos. The ensemble includes Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Lisa Marie, and even a young Jack Black.
The film’s stop-motion animation a hillarious looking martians with funny ack! ack! language, bizarre ray guns with awesome sound effects, and exaggerated performances from talented actors, make it pure Burton - gleefully weird, self-aware, and visually playful. Though dismissed on release, (it made a profit of about $20 million, but more people saw Independence Day, a movie with a similar budget that released at the same time, also about an alien invasion and ironically, was actually B-grade due to its stereotypical plot and characters, thought it was disgused as A-grade, whereas Mars Attacks! was A-grade disguised as B-grade) it’s appreciated as one of Burton’s boldest and most eccentric works - a perfect blend of parody and affection for mid-century pulp sci-fi.
Lisa Marie in: Mars Attacks! - Ed Wood - Sleepy Hollow
On the surface, it’s pure B-movie parody (ray guns, rubbery aliens, and screaming humans) but beneath the absurdity lies a sharp act of subversion.
The alien invasion film, usually a patriotic call to arms, becomes a satire of human vanity. The world’s leaders are inept, and the heroes are not scientists or soldiers but an elderly woman and her grandson armed with an annoying country song.
The alien threat, traditionally a metaphor for fear of the “other,” is rendered ridiculous - their cartoonish “ack-ack!” voices and glass-domed heads mock human self-importance.
The ensemble disaster movie, full of famous faces, becomes a playground of self-parody: Jack Nicholson plays two roles, and even Tom Jones saves the day.
Burton’s subversion turns the spectacle of destruction into joyful chaos. Mars Attacks! exposes how absurd both human and cinematic conventions can be - it’s an irreverent masterpiece that celebrates the glorious stupidity of its own genre.
Frankenweenie (2012)
Frankenweenie brings Burton full circle back to his earliest short film and his recurring motifs of dogs, childhood, and resurrection. Shot in black and white stop-motion, the film reimagines Frankenstein through the lens of a boy and his beloved pet. Gothic horror references abound, from Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, to Pet Cemetery, while the characters’ angular designs, enormous eyes, and long skinny legs, feel quintessentially Burton. There’s the dog that looks like the Bride of Frankenstein, the pet turtle named Shelly after Mary Shelly, and who could forget the most Tim Burton looking character ever? The Weird Girl who is a clairvoyant and reads the fortunes of people through her cat’s poo.
What sets Frankenweenie apart is its genre - a genuine children’s horror film. It manages to be spooky, sweet, and safe, offering a rare introduction to the gothic for younger audiences. Like Edward Scissorhands, it’s about love, loss, and the beauty of imperfection. But it’s also unique for a Burton film. Sure it has his trademarks and recurring collaborators: Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Christopher Lee, and Danny Elfman. And it’s in black and white and has stop-motion animation. But it’s the only animation he’s done that isn’t a musical. And despite the obvious influences and references to subcultures and pop culture, it’s a unique film.
In Frankenweenie, Burton flips the central trope of Frankenstein:
The mad scientist is replaced by an innocent child motivated by love, not ambition.
The monster, usually a symbol of terror, becomes a loyal pet - a symbol of purity.
The horror genre is transformed into something accessible and humorous, allowing children to delight in darkness without fear.
By reimagining horror as empathy, Burton crafts one of his most personal films. It also continues his lifelong project of reclaiming the grotesque - showing that what we call “monstrous” often reveals the deepest form of love and humanity.
Conclusion
Across these five films, Tim Burton consistently subverts cinematic tropes to create new emotional landscapes. He turns monsters into friends, villains into jesters, and death into a playground. His worlds are filled with contrast - light and shadow, humour and horror, innocence and decay - yet beneath it all lies compassion for the outsider.
What makes Burton unique is his refusal to conform to genre expectations. In his films, robots feel, ghosts laugh, failures dream, aliens dance, and dogs come back to life. His subversions are not acts of rebellion for their own sake - they are expressions of empathy. By inverting tropes, Burton invites us to see the world through the eyes of the misunderstood and reminds us that what’s “weird” is often what’s most human.
