The stop-motion animation looks especially crisp in the film’s black-and-white world.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 15, 2023

[Tim] Burton mixes in a love of horror movies with an innocently ghoulish sense of humor and harmless gross-out gags, capturing that childhood fascination with monster movies and the macabre.

| Jan 7, 2023

Burton has set aside his usual, increasingly cloying commercial drives to tell a story that means something to him.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 23, 2022

At its core, this is the story of a boy and his dog dressed up as a classic horror movie homage.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

The film is a personal look into Burton as an artist (something that's been said by almost every critic so far, bear with me) as well as a look into the genre that he loves.

| Feb 11, 2022

By any count, it's the best film he's made in a long while.

| Mar 10, 2021

There's no question that in revisiting his movie-making roots, Burton has also lovingly tipped his hat to to old school monster flicks.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 8, 2020

It's Alive! It's Alive! Frankenweenie lives and breathes perfection from start to finish.

| Nov 27, 2019

A fascination with things that are dead (or not-quite-dead-yet); a gushing homage for classic horror films; and a gallery of amusing grotesques.

| Oct 21, 2019

It shows not only a reverence for the horror classic, but also feels to at least this animation lover that Tim Burton is making a statement about the viability and value of animation as a classic genre of film capable of the highest level of artistry.

| Jul 29, 2019

A gothic comedy for youngsters, mixing Burton's love of the macabre with a decidedly gentler bent. Frankenweenie finds Burton squarely in his element.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2019

The puppetry is simply superb as is texture; it's excellent attention to detail from puppet-makers Mackinnon and Saunders.

| Feb 28, 2019

Frankenweenie, which made me cry almost as much as the audibly sobbing kids in the theater, is a big-hearted optimist's tale beautifully warped through Burton's trademark twisted vision.

| Feb 26, 2019

This movie has so much heart.

| Original Score: A | Feb 25, 2019

Frankenweenie is inventive and fun. Burton fans will likely love it. Others will take pleasure from specific qualities and moments within the production, but not have much feel for the film as a whole.

| Original Score: B | Jan 31, 2019

In step with this year's earlier released ParaNorman, the lively and loony Frankenweenie will capture the upbeat heart and soul craziness of Burton's flashy and flaky playground of absurdity. Sophisticated and colorfully conceived...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 19, 2018

What could have been a delightfully offbeat, darkly quirky riff on horror films, kid's cinema and the 'boy and his dog' plot is instead a lazy, disappointing slog.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 2, 2018

This film is a complete package that maintains a good pace and tells a captivating story through stunning black and white animation.

| Oct 20, 2018

The joyfully culty Frankenweenie 3D entertains throughout with magical fantasy charm.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2018

Even better, the quirky story of a boy and his dog shows that Burton has still got plenty of wonderful weirdness to bring to the big screen.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 7, 2018