Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie (2012) is Tim Burton's black-and-white stop-motion feature, free to watch online on iFILM. Young Victor adores his dog Sparky and casts him in homemade movies. Then a car kills the pup on the street.

Grief pushes the boy into a wild experiment. He hauls Sparky's body up to the attic, rigs the wires, draws down a lightning bolt — and the dog wags his tail again, stitches on his neck and a bolt or two coming loose. For a while the secret holds. Then Sparky runs off, the other kids copy the trick, and the quiet town of New Holland drowns in a parade of reanimated pets gone wrong.

Burton grew this feature out of his own 1984 short, shooting it frame by frame in puppet animation. It's a love letter to old monster pictures: the hero's name, the lab lightning and the stitches all nod to Frankenstein, while Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau and Winona Ryder lend their voices. A family tale spooky enough to be a real treat. Watch Frankenweenie (2012) online on iFILM.