There are countless challenges in adapting a stage musical for presentation on film: capturing huge choral numbers in a medium traditionally reliant on close-ups, balancing the fantasy of expression through song with a more closely guarded check of reality, and finding the right mix of singers and actors are just a few. But when you consider the work of Stephen Sondheim, one of the darkest and most complicated writers Broadway has ever seen, the challenges grow exponentially. In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, director Tim Burton has taken perhaps Sondheim’s best work and made of it a textbook for translating Broadway to Hollywood.

Though a good third of the show’s musical numbers are cut for the film, Burton crafts an environment so eerie and builds a cast so emotive that his tight, quick adaptation seeps with the Sondheim ethos. It seems that Burton is an extension of Sondheim, and it helps that Johnny Depp seems to be an extension of Burton. As Todd, a barber whose life was swept away when a judge (Alan Rickman) imprisoned him to lust after his wife, Depp is a gem. He’s got a touch of the Jack Sparrow bravado but is soaked in the boiling, revenge-driven madness that compels the character. Depp is especially brilliant when paired with Helena Bonham Carter, who as Mrs. Lovett inherits her own brand of madness and, because of her fondness for the barber, cooks his victims in her meat pies.

As Todd becomes more and more murderous, the film oozes more blood and macabre style. And because none of the main players are Broadway-ready singers (indeed, Ed Sanders’ version of “Not While I’m Around” is the best-sung number in the show), the way they act and sing Sondheim’s lyrics evoke a brilliantly ghastly mood. Take special note of the eerie “My Friends,” Todd’s love letter to his razors. It and “Epiphany,” the moment where Todd decides to exercise his frustration with Judge Turpin on the rest of London’s shady characters, are some of the best moments of the film.

You might imagine that a movie about a serial killer, especially one seen through Burton’s lens, would be gory. And you’re right; it’s bloody. But it’s bloody brilliant, too, and quickly puts the other movie musicals you’ve seen in recent years in their proper place: right below #1.

Rating: * * * * * of 5

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