Returning to the painstaking stop-motion animation he employed with amazing success in Henry Selleck’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton presents a hair-raising legend based on a 19th-century Russian folktale, in which a young man (Johnny Depp) mistakenly weds a corpse (Helena Bonham Carter) while on a two-day trek to the village of his real bride-to-be.
It is up to the groom’s flesh-and-blood fiancée (Emily Watson), who has been pining for the arrival of her intended, to face her wraith-like rival and make peace with her by promising to live her dreams for her and by vowing to remember her always.
Only then are the living bride and groom free to proceed with their own wedding ceremony…