Sweeney Todd’s Razor-Sharp Plot and Ending Explained: Why Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter’s Gothic Classic Demands a 2025 Rewatch
Sharpen the razors: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street erupts in vengeance, blood, and meat pies as Johnny Depp carves a chilling Benjamin Barker in Tim Burton’s operatic spin on Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical—an adaptation that slashes straight to the bone and never loosens its grip.
Tim Burton swung big with Sweeney Todd in 2007 and did not bring a safety net. It opens with vengeance, blood, and meat pies, and then keeps pushing. Even if you know the stage musical, this thing still hits like a straight razor to the jugular in 2025.
The movie in a sentence (and why people still talk about it)
Johnny Depp plays Benjamin Barker, back in Victorian London under the name Sweeney Todd after being railroaded by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). He teams up with Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), reopens his barbershop as a revenge front, and the bodies start falling into the bakehouse. It is a full-on gothic revenge opera from Burton, adapted from Stephen Sondheim, released December 21, 2007, and it settled into cult-classic status for a reason.
- Rotten Tomatoes: 86% (Certified Fresh)
- Metacritic: 83/100
- IMDb: 7.3/10
- Worldwide box office: $152,523,164
- Production budget: $50,000,000
- Oscar nomination: Best Actor (Johnny Depp)
Critics loved the cast, especially Depp, Bonham Carter, and Rickman, and the film sticks tight to the spirit of the stage show. Depp’s vocals are better than anyone expected, and his dead-eyed chemistry with Bonham Carter gives the movie its rotten, beating heart.
The setup (and the rot underneath)
Barker/Todd returns to find Turpin has destroyed his wife Lucy’s life (Laura Michelle Kelly) and claimed his daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) as his ward. Todd sets up shop above Lovett’s pie place. He shaves, slices, and sends the evidence down the chute; she bakes and sells. It’s gruesome, it’s operatic, and it’s weirdly funny in that bleak Burton way. Alan Rickman’s Turpin is the kind of villain who makes revenge feel justified even when it is absolutely not.
How the ending lands (and how it almost landed even harder)
The final act does not soften. Todd finally cuts Turpin’s throat. In the chaos, he also kills the beggar woman without realizing she is Lucy. When the truth hits, he burns Mrs. Lovett alive for lying about Lucy’s fate. Then young Toby (Ed Sanders) finishes the job, taking Todd’s life. Whether Todd accepts it or just gives up is left to your read.
Earlier drafts were even bleaker and more explicit about that choice. One version had Todd lock eyes with Toby, unbutton his collar, and literally offer his neck, asking for release without a word. Another detail that didn’t make the final cut: instead of standing there in a cold trance after he throws Lovett into the oven, he drops to his knees, smothers out her screams with his hands, and then crawls back to Lucy’s body, crushed by guilt rather than consumed by rage. There was also a cut musical sequence that would have brought back the victims — Lucy and Turpin included — to haunt Todd before leaving him alone in darkness, his life flashing in a red wash of regret. The film we got is still brutal, but that version would have been emotionally annihilating. Personally, I think the restraint works; the devastation is there without underlining it in neon. But I also see the case for going all the way.
Why it still cuts deep in 2025
Burton didn’t just transfer Sondheim’s show to the screen; he rebuilt it as a grim little clockwork nightmare. Dante Ferretti’s production design soaks 19th-century London in soot and misery, and Dariusz Wolski’s cinematography keeps you boxed in with the characters’ worst choices. The singing? Not showy — confessional. Depp and Bonham Carter bleed through their numbers. It’s effective because it sounds like people trying to survive their own thoughts, not Broadway polish.
"It isn’t a jolly romp, either, but a dark revenge tragedy with heartbreak, mayhem and bloody good meat pies."
- Roger Ebert
That sums up the vibe. And if you need one more reason to rewatch: Rickman’s Turpin remains one of the great vile, soft-spoken monsters. Every scene he’s in curdles.
Stream it, then tell me where you land
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is streaming on fuboTV and Paramount+.
Was Burton right to keep the ending spare instead of going full ghostly encore? Would you have preferred the cut version with Todd literally offering his neck and the victims returning one last time? And while we’re at it: does this story need a sequel, or is the final image all the closure it should ever get? Drop your take below.