We all love Wednesday, the thrilling sounds, the killer outfits, the second-guessing of who the villain is, and that feeling of being kept right on the edge of our seats.
But have you noticed how Wednesday shouldn’t even work?
It is Gothic, it is horror, dripping with shadows and sarcasm, the kind of thing that should only appeal to niche audiences. And yet? Millions binge-watched it. Teenagers dressed like her. Adults quoted her. TikTok turned her dance into a trend, and thanks to that, we even had Lady Gaga in the sequel.
That is the Tim Burton effect. For four decades, he has taken characters who are too weird, too eerie, too out of place, and made them magnetic. The suburban monster (Edward Scissorhands). The chaotic ghost (Beetlejuice). Even Batman. Burton’s magic is that he never asks us to pity the outsider; he makes us fall in love with them.
So while you wait for the next season of Wednesday, here are 18 Tim Burton movies you can enjoy.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
What would you do if someone stole the thing you loved most? For Pee-wee, an eccentric manchild, it isn’t a person or even a pet; it is his bright red bicycle. When it disappears, he sets off on a journey that makes no sense on paper but feels like a fever dream on screen.
Cowboys, biker gangs, fortune tellers, dinosaurs in the desert; every stop gets stranger, every character more absurd. What starts as a simple “boy wants his bike back” story becomes a cult classic, the kind of film that feels like wandering into someone else’s dream and not wanting to wake up.
This was Burton’s first feature film, the one that set him apart as a director, proving how an obsession with something can take you places you never imagined you would go.
Beetlejuice & Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (1988 & 2024)
When Beetlejuice hit cinemas in 1988, it wasn’t just another comedy. It was chaos bottled and sold as cinema. Michael Keaton spat out lines so outrageous they turned a grotesque ghost into a cult icon.
A young couple dies suddenly and finds themselves haunting their own house, but they are not alone; there’s Beetlejuice. Think of everything you would never want: loud, unruly, disgusting. He eats bugs, bends rules, and turns death into carnival art. And yet you cannot look away.
The film became an obsession. People quoted him, dressed like him, and made him a Halloween staple. And then, decades later, 2024 brought him back in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with the much-loved Jenna Ortega stepping into the story. Chaos had a sequel, and it was glorious.
But here is the catch: as you watch, you might feel tempted to say his name three times. We would not dare. Would you?
Batman + Batman Returns (1989 & 1992)
You love superhero movies? So do we. Because honestly, who doesn’t love a brooding Dark Knight, a villain with terrible hair, or an evil genius plotting the end of the world? But now imagine Gotham in Tim Burton’s hands.
In his version, Batman is neither glossy nor conventionally heroic. He is haunted, almost swallowed by the very city he is trying to save. Gotham itself looks less like a metropolis and more like a nightmare painted in shadow.
And of course, there was a sequel. Suddenly, we are not just fighting crime, we are watching a Penguin crawl out of the sewers and a Catwoman stitch herself back together with claws sharper than her wit.
This is not your average superhero flick. It is eerie, theatrical, and strangely beautiful.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Imagine if you had the power to shape the world with a swipe of your fingers. With one motion, you could groom roses into dragons, trim hedges into castles, carve beauty out of anything. But you could never ever touch the girl you love.
That is Edward. Created by a lonely inventor who died before he could finish him, Edward is left with scissors for hands: sharp, silver, impossible to hide. Johnny Depp brings him to life in this beautiful tragedy.
It is a gothic fantasy that does more than make you marvel at what he can create. It makes you ask a more complex question: what would you give up just to be held?
Ed Wood (1994)
Every director aspires to create a masterpiece. Ed Wood is inspired by the real-life Hollywood filmmaker often called “the worst director of all time,” a man who somehow turned disasters into passion projects and loved every second of it.
The film follows him as he scrambles to shoot movies on shoestring budgets, dressing his friends in rubber suits, stealing shots on the street, and declaring every take “perfect!” even when it is anything but. His drive is so wild it borders on delusion, but that is precisely what makes him magnetic.
Burton does not mock him; he celebrates him. Because beneath the bad props and the laughable scripts is someone who refuses to quit, who believes in his vision no matter how the world laughs.
Mars Attacks! (1996)
The aliens arrive, and for a moment, it looks like peace. They come with broad smiles, well, more like enormous brains in glass domes, and the world leans in, ready to shake hands. Then they pull out ray guns and blast everything in sight.
What follows is chaos: Las Vegas in flames, world leaders reduced to ash, a grandma calmly listening to her headphones while the apocalypse rages outside. The aliens shriek “Ack! Ack!” as they destroy everything, and the humans… honestly do not stand a chance.
It is noisy, absurd, and completely deliberate. Burton turns the classic alien invasion into a cartoon nightmare, where the joke is that no one survives with dignity.
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
There is a village where no one sleeps easy. When the fog rolls in and the hoofbeats echo through the night, everyone knows what comes next: the Headless Horseman. He does not knock, he does not wait. One swing of the axe, and another head is gone.
Into this nightmare walks Ichabod Crane, a jittery investigator who faints at the sight of blood but is somehow expected to solve the murders. The deeper he digs, the stranger it becomes. Secrets pile up, curses spread, and the forest itself seems alive.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
A storm in space throws an astronaut off course. He crashes, climbs out of the wreckage, and finds himself on a planet where apes walk, talk, and rule, while humans are slaves.
The first shock is visual: gorillas in armor, chimps as generals, orangutans as politicians. The second shock is how quickly the balance flips. Humans are the hunted, the voiceless, the powerless. Our hero must fight to survive, to rebel, to prove he is more than an animal in chains.
It is strange, ambitious, and relentlessly Burton. Not his most loved film, but one you will not forget once you have seen it. Beneath the costumes and the chaos is a chilling question: what if the chain of power shifted and you were no longer at the top?
Big Fish (2003)
Every family has that one storyteller, the uncle, the father, the grandma who makes their past sound like a fairytale. In Big Fish, that storyteller is Edward Bloom. He talks about witches, giants, impossible towns, and loves so big they bend reality. His son rolls his eyes, convinced it’s all lies… until the line between story and truth begins to blur.
It’s colourful, whimsical, and yes, heartbreaking. By the time the credits roll, you’ll be asking yourself: do we remember life as it happened, or as we need it to have happened?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
So you love chocolate? Then you’ll love this, especially if you’re lucky enough to find a golden ticket. Okay, fine… You probably wouldn’t. It’s one in a million. But Charlie Bucket does. A poor boy with nothing to his name suddenly walks into the most famous chocolate factory in the world.
Except this isn’t just any tour. The factory is bright, magical, and mouth-watering, but also strange. One by one, the kids who came for candy pay the price for being greedy, spoiled, or selfish. And at the centre is Willy Wonka himself, played by Johnny Depp, charming, unsettling, and impossible to figure out.
Corpse Bride (2005)
You think wedding jitters are bad? Try this: you slip a ring onto what you think is a branch, and it turns out to be a corpse’s finger. Congratulations, you are now married to the dead.
That is the Corpse Bride. A groom stumbles into the underworld by accident and discovers love in a place no one would expect. The film is stitched in stop-motion, painted in melancholy blues and greys, but the story is anything but lifeless.
It is both funny and sad, yet strangely romantic, the kind of movie that makes you wonder whether true love belongs more to the living or the dead.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
You think your barber is scary? Wait until you meet Sweeney Todd. He gives you the closest shave of your life, because it is also your last. And right downstairs, his partner Mrs. Lovett is baking pies that taste suspiciously like… people.
This is not your average musical. It is bloody, dramatic, and strangely beautiful. The songs cut as sharp as the razors, the humor is darker than midnight, and the story keeps you tense even when you already know the knife is coming.
Alice in Wonderland & Alice Through the Looking Glass (2010 & 2016)
Remember that popular TikTok sound: “The gardeners have planted white roses and I specifically asked for red… You could always paint the roses red… That’s an odd thing to say.” That is a snippet from Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
It is a classic we have all grown up with, a magical place where one sip makes you taller and another makes you smaller. And yes, we have all secretly wondered what that would do for weight loss.
But Burton’s Wonderland is not the dreamy pastel one from the storybooks. Here, Alice is not a weak little girl chasing rabbits. She is bold, brave, and more than ready to fight her way through madness. If you love strong, feminine leads who take charge while still looking iconic, this Alice is your girl.
Alice Through the Looking Glass takes it even further. It is the story you thought you knew, twisted into something stranger and unexpectedly beautiful. Watching it feels less like reading a fairytale and more like falling headfirst into someone else’s wild imagination.
Dark Shadows (2012)
Two centuries in a coffin. That is how long Barnabas Collins has been buried before he crawls out into the 1970s. Pale, hungry, and very confused, he finds his family in ruins and his once-grand mansion crumbling. Naturally, he decides to fix it, with the small problem that he is also a vampire.
The film is gothic, but it is also ridiculous in the best way. Barnabas struggles with televisions, lava lamps, and hippies, all while trying not to drain the neighbors dry. His family is just as eccentric, filled with secrets, betrayals, and more curses than one bloodline can handle.
Watching it feels like being invited to dinner with a vampire. You are fascinated, uneasy, and perched on the edge of your seat, wondering what could happen next.
Frankenweenie (2012)
We all know the legend of Frankenstein: a scientist who plays god, stitching a monster out of corpses and shocking it to life. Burton asks a different question: what if that scientist was not a mad doctor, but a boy who loved his dog too much to let him go?
Victor loses Sparky, his best friend, and grief consumes him. So he does the unthinkable. He builds a lab in the attic, waits for the storm, and reassembles his dog. And it works. Sparky runs, wags, and loves just as before, only now with stitches across his body and electricity in his bones.
Big Eyes (2014)
Margaret Keane creates paintings no one can forget, portraits of children with eyes so huge they seem to look straight through you. The world falls in love. But her husband takes the credit, builds an empire, and convinces everyone she is just a housewife in the background.
The real horror here is not monsters or ghosts. It is being trapped in someone else’s story while your own truth is erased. Watching it is both infuriating and fascinating, and it leaves you asking: if someone stole your voice and the world believed them, how far would you go to take it back?
If you love stories of women reclaiming their power, this one is definitely for you.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Picture an old house standing on a lonely island. From the outside, it looks abandoned and forgotten. Step through the door and time rewinds. Inside are children who never age: a girl who floats like a balloon if she is not tied down, a boy with bees living inside him, and twins whose faces are always hidden.
This is Miss Peregrine’s home, a place where the peculiar are protected but also trapped. Every day loops on repeat, keeping them safe from the monsters that hunt them. But safety never lasts forever, and when the loop finally breaks, the children’s strange gifts are the only thing that can save them.
Burton takes the idea of a boarding school and twists it into something uncanny, a place that feels like both sanctuary and prison.
Dumbo (2019)
A circus. A baby elephant. And ears so big that the world laughs at him. That is Dumbo’s life: ridiculed, lonely, and separated from his mother. Until one moment changes everything. He flaps those oversized ears and takes off, soaring above the jeers.
Burton takes Disney’s gentle classic and reshapes it into something grander and more emotional. The circus is not just magic; it is cruel. Behind the glitter lies greed, and behind the applause hides exploitation. Dumbo’s gift becomes his curse, and the humans around him must decide whether they will use it or protect it.
Grab Your Popcorn🍿
Tim Burton has a way of taking the strange and making them beautiful. His worlds are dark, dripping with shadows and fantasy, yet impossible to look away from. They are the kind of places you want to escape into, even when they scare you.
Over the years, his films have become cult favorites, won Academy Awards, and established themselves as cultural landmarks. If you are a fan of Johnny Depp, you will notice him often, since Burton has cast him in many of his most unforgettable roles.
So grab your popcorn and fasten your seatbelt. The deeper you go into Burton’s worlds, the more you will want to stay there, a place where the weird is wonderful, the outsiders are magnetic, and fantasy feels just real enough to make you believe.
