Trailer Tuesday: Sweeney Todd

I always have time for Tim Burton (I even watched his worst movie – the soulless Planet of the Apes remake). Along with Neil Gaiman, Burton is one of my major creative/career role models. And next up from this former-animator-turned-film-director is the gothic serial killer musical (you read that right!) Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Not that you’d actually guess from the trailer above that the film is a musical. But it is.

Think of Sweeney Todd as the antithesis to Hairspray. It’s the big screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical (itself based on 19th Century penny dreadfuls) written by Stephen Sondheim.

The film focuses on a mild mannered barber, Benjamin Barker, who is falsely accused of a crime and shipped off to an Australian penal colony. When Barker returns 15 years later, now calling himself Sweeney Todd, he discovers that he has lost his family – his beautiful wife committed suicide after being raped by the corrupt judge who sentenced Barker in the first place. Swearing revenge against the whole of society, Todd takes to luring clients into his barber shop and slashing throats with his razor. He joins forces with Mrs. Lovett, the owner of a local meat-pie shop to dispose of the bodies… let’s say rather creatively.


Burton has always been a director with acting favourites. Sweeney Todd reunites him yet again with Johnny Depp as Todd and Burton’s real life partner Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. Alan Rickman and “Borat” Sacha Baron Cohen jump on board as Todd’s hated rivals.

Burton’s distinct dark and twisted visual style comes through strongly in this trailer. The film looks as gloriously dark and bloody as Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. But question marks hang suspended over the actors’ singing abilities. Unlike Hairspray, the Sweeney Todd cast don’t have experience in musical theatre, so it will be interesting to see if Johnny and co. can pull off the film’s rather intensive singing requirements.

Come Sweeney Todd’s Christmas release in the US, critics may just have their cut-throat razors out for this new batch of singing stars.