Tim Burton’s 10 Goth-iest Movies, Ranked by Goth Factor

Paul Schrodt

11 September 2024 at 1:07 pm·6-min read

Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Paramount/Warner Bros

Tim Burton launched his career with a short film about a dead dog brought back to life with a jolt of electricity, 1984’s Frankenweenie. He’s been putting his unique gothic—and straight-up goth—stamp on movies ever since.

A lover of all things black and sporting a signature shock of wild hair that resembles that of The Cure’s goth pioneer Robert Smith, the director may have had his first big (and uncharacteristic) hit with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure the following year, but even that film hinted at his predilections with the unforgettably eerie appearance of Large Marge, the ghost of a truck driver.

His post-Pee-Wee career is littered (in an awesome way) with ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, black goo, and an aesthetic that is both nightmarish and gorgeous, betraying the auteur’s background as a visual artist first. (Seriously, if you get a chance to see The World of Tim Burton exhibition, take it.)

You can just ask Michael Keaton, who took on another uncanny and undead character in, yes, Beetlejuice. When that supernatural comedy became a surprise blockbuster, it was clear that Burton would be putting his unique goth-y stamp all over the box office, to the delight of a certain leather Doc Martens boots-wearing, Winona Ryder-worshipping, Joy Division-spinning crowd.

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He’s (mostly) made good on that early promise with legendary staples of modern goth culture, whether that’s a slinky reanimated cat lady—Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Batman Returns—his many collaborations with goth queen Helena Bonham Carter, or a certain parable about a lovable freak.

Now he’s unleashed another ingenious work in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which is funny and gross and weird, even if franchise building doesn’t feel particularly goth (except when it means, well, going to a Cure concert)—complete with spilling intestines, a stapled-together Monica Belluci, a Mario Bava tribute, and a “Soul Train” to the great beyond. It is a welcome return to the Burton we’ve known for almost four decades at this point.

Here we’ve assembled the 10 goth-iest movies directed by Burton (so no, sorry, The Nightmare Before Christmas doesn’t count), ranked by their goth factor on the Robert Smith scale.

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Dark Shadows

Goth Factor: 3 out of 10 Robert Smiths

Dark Shadows may not be among Tim Burton’s best movies (okay, it’s definitely not) but it is a loving homage to the ’60s gothic soap opera of the same name, down to a cameo from the original show’s vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), a role taken on by a stiff Johnny Depp in white makeup. Consider this a mere curiosity in Burton’s cabinet.

Big Fish

Goth Factor: 3.5 Robert Smiths

Big Fish may very well be Burton’s best film, an emotional and magical powerhouse that explores tall tales and grief, which the filmmaker made in the wake of his own father’s impactful death. Ewan McGregor as the strapping young version of the protagonist Edward Bloom won’t scare anyone, but characters like Karl the Giant and Helena Bonham Carter’s the “Witch” are potent and unsettling enough to warrant inclusion here.

Mars Attacks!

Goth Factor: 4 Robert Smiths

A riff on supposedly scary, actually silly B-movies that once rotated on late night cable, Mars Attacks! is an odd trip, mixing cheesy computer-generated aliens and folksy Americana with distressing bouts of violence. It may be more of a stoner movie than anything else, but we can see Robert Smith watching this on repeat in his green room.

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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Goth Factor: 5 Robert Smiths

Still from Warner Bros Sweeney Todd — *Sweeney Todd*

Warner Bros

Broadway musicals in general and Stephen Sondheim in particular are not really goth by their nature (too outwardly fun!), but Burton turns up the grim qualities of a story involving serial killing, cannibalism, as well as a game, Oscar-nominated performance by Depp. What a dish.

Batman Returns

Goth Factor: 6 Robert Smiths

Superheroes lost all their noirish cool years ago. The first Burton-directed Batman was way too colorful, thanks to the Joker, to be included here, but Batman Returns spills its morbid guts in exquisite fashion, whether Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is spray painting black all over her former pink palace, Keaton is eating soup in an actual cave, or Danny DeVito’s sewer-dwelling Penguin is coughing up black sludge. Amen to the era of creep DC Comics.

Ed Wood

Goth Factor: 6.5 Robert Smiths

Historical figure and notable eccentric Ed Wood nearly made a movie like Mars Attacks! with his beloved slice of mid-century trash Plan 9 from Outer Space. He was also authentically unlike most people, a crossdressing filmmaker who willed his low-budget, mind-bending, sometimes unwatchable creations into the world, even when absolutely no one asked him to. May he rest still raging in his grave.

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Sleepy Hollow

Goth Factor: 8 Robert Smiths

A turn toward restrained, sincere drama for Burton, Sleepy Hollow holds up very well. There is something in the withholding quality of this mystery, centered on the Headless Horseman and constable Ichabod Crane (Depp) investigating the myth in the namesake town, that adds to its sense of incomprehensible dread. If this isn’t part of your go-to Halloween watches, you’re probably not reading this.

Corpse Bride

Goth Factor: 9 Robert Smiths

All you have to do is search #corpsebridetattoo on Instagram to see how deeply this romantic stop motion-animated movie about complicated courtship in the Land of the Dead has affected the goth community. Specifically, women who grew up buying black chokers at Hot Topic and have a Siouxsie and the Banshees poster on their wall. One point deducted because Burton was a co-director.

Beetlejuice

Goth Factor: 9.5 Robert Smiths

The sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a bit too corporate and fan service-heavy to make this list, but the original is a classic that not only introduced the titular pinstriped bio-exorcist, but also Catherine O’Hara’s maker of menacing sculptures and Winona Ryder, here finding her sweet spot as an angsty teenage friend of ghosts who wears all of the black eyeliner (“My whole life is a dark room,” she quips). The plot literally starts with a married couple drowning. It will continue haunting and delighting for generations.

Edward Scissorhands

Goth Factor: 10 Robert Smiths

A masterpiece that answered the prayers of every moody and misunderstood kid in the suburbs, Edward Scissorhands is heady in its concoction of gothic references (horror king Vincent Price is pitch-perfect in his final film role as the inventor of the dear title character with hands unfinished), bedtime parable, and sublimely freaky production and costume design (shoutout to longtime collaborator Colleen Atwood, who started her magic with Burton here). But it’s not just the scissor appendages that make the man; Depp’s performance is touchingly somber, a study in what it means to be incomplete, cast outside the realm of the normal, only ever looking in. Plus, once more: Winona freaking Ryder!