Rating: ***.75

Just realised that my review of this film is long overdue! Been feeling a severe sense of blog inertia.

Sweeny Todd isn’t really a film, it’s like a macabre. Perhaps I’m using the wrong word to describe a different term. I mean to say it as a noun, it’s an art piece that makes macabre and gothic into something of a masterpiece. It doesn’t matter that the heinous crimes he committed were out of reason and illogical that he was not caught despite such blatant carelessness in his crimes. The only thing that mattered was the way the film was presented. It’s very Tim Burton, but no longer in his usual comic-book way like ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. Johnny Depp is quite adept at portraying such a demonic character who masks his blood lust under the masquerade of ‘revenge’. Helena Bonham Carter however, looks no different in her gothic getup as Bellatrix (in Harry Potter), and her singing is well… not that pleasant either.

The film gets gory with all the digging of that sharp shiny razor into the necks of such unsuspecting clients. And at times, you really can’t predict whether it’s a shave his giving them or a ‘close shave’. It gets better when we see how they grind up all their victims and use them as their secret ingredient in Mrs Lovett’s special pies.

But best of all, I like the slogan - Never Forget, Never Forgive.

It just sounds so wonderfully and wickedly clever! haha…