Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie (2012) ****

Early in the frantic third act of “Frankenweenie”—Tim Burton’s sublime stop-motion animated comic fantasy—lightning strikes the fictional town of New Holland, literally and figuratively, and the quasi-suburban hamlet is overrun by an assortment of monsters evocative of classic Hollywood horror films.

Leading the charge, though in much more heroic terms, is the films titular hero, the cute and playful dog named Sparky, victim of an unfortunate encounter with a car in the early going but ingeniously brought back to life—in a beautifully detailed sequence that is like a shot-by-shot homage to James Whale’s original “Frankenstein”—by his owner, the reticent but brilliant young Victor (voice of Charlie Tahan).

The camera catches a glimpse of a movie theater just beyond the action, the marquee spelling out the name of the feature, “Bambi.” Produced by Disney, “Frankenweenie” isn’t light cartoon fare and Burton—infamously passed over in his early days working at the studio when his drawings were deemed too dark and morbid—isn’t the filmmaker one would expect to suddenly be in charge. But the reference, funny and ironic, is less about how far Burton has come as an artist and more about how long it took Disney to finally realize it.

In “Frankenweenie,” signs that Burton has full creative control are in plain sight—right down to a brilliant opening when the Disney logo fades from its traditional colorful magic kingdom into a stormy, shadowy haunted castle punctuated by Danny Elfman’s ominous, beautifully elegiac score and Burton’s gorgeous black and white imagery—and the result is a lyrical, layered masterpiece, the director’s most accomplished, engaging and satisfying effort since “Ed Wood.”

Not just with visuals, the movie provides allusions to other movies, some Burton’s own, through the eccentric personalities of its characters. New Holland itself is a stop motion version of the quiet town with secrets in “Edward Scissorhands”; Victor is sort of a cartoon Edward, gentle and gifted and complete with hands this time.

Some of the other kids are similarly quirky and distinctive—such as the sneaky Edgar, a mischievous urchin with an Ygor-like hunchback and distorted features that bring to mind Peter Lorre or Lon Chaney. Victor’s next door neighbor Else is the would-be heroine, melancholy and morose like the teenager from “Beetlejuice”—and voiced, perfectly, by Winona Ryder.

If part of “Frankenweenie” is meant as an ode to horror films—“Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein,” “Nosferatu,” “Godzilla,” “Gremlins”—its core is a poignant tale of friendship between a shy boy and his little pet. And unlike its inspiration, the moral ambiguities of bringing the dead back to life are offset by deeper meaning. Far removed from the wild-eyed Colin Clive who used spare parts to create Boris Karloff’s monster, Victor’s reanimation of Sparky is driven not by madness but by love. The movie is a thoughtful rumination on the pain of loss and how hard it is to let go.

Burton’s fascination with darkness and death, with the misbegotten and the misunderstood, remains stirring and mysterious. The film’s most moving scene, for example, takes place when Sparky, frightened and confused after being brought back to life, returns alone to the cemetery and pauses to rest on top of his own grave. That the image seems to suggest he’s somewhere between life and death—not quite belonging to this world but, like a phantom, somehow still a part of it—is one of the more poetic, strange and comforting contemplations of what lies beyond to come along in quite awhile.