COVE

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) is set in a bleak and perpetually gray Victorian town.  The color palette is a lot of blues, grays, and muted tones which creates a somber and eerie mood.  The locations are graveyards, and decrepit buildings and there are a number of decaying corpses shown throughout.  The film also mixes horror and humor by making skeletons, maggots and the dismembered bodies charming or funny when Victor visits the land of the dead.  The entire plot revolves around death.  There is a corpse that returns to life, a marriage between a living man and a dead woman and a very lively underworld.  Emily, who is the corpse bride, is portrayed sympathetically.  Death isn’t simply horror here; it’s tragic, beautiful, and emotional as the film blurs the lines between horror and beauty.  Emily’s backstory of being betrayed and murdered by her fiancé centers on themes of lost love, betrayal and revenge.  Victor, who accidentally proposes to Emily, can be seen as a reluctant Gothic hero.  He is a sensitive and artistic man who gets drawn into a dark, supernatural world.  Emily is the tragic Gothic victim.  She is beautiful, was wronged and is caught between worlds:  the land of the living and the land of the dead.