Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A small suburban town receives a visit from a castaway unfinished science experiment named Edward.
Edward Scissorhands is a visually distinctive Tim Burton fairy tale with strong performances, particularly from Johnny Depp and Dianne Wiest. The cinematography by Stefan Czapsky brilliantly contrasts the garish pastel suburbia with Edward's gothic castle. Depp's largely silent, expressive performance is genuinely exceptional, and the film's singular gothic-suburban aesthetic is unmistakably one-of-a-kind, earning high novelty. The plot, while charming, is fairly thin and episodic — more a series of vignettes than a tightly constructed narrative. The ending, while emotionally resonant and fitting for the fairy-tale framing device, is bittersweet in a somewhat predictable way that doesn't quite match the inventiveness of the film's setup.