Corpse Bride drew inspiration from a 17th-century Jewish folktale, which Joe Ranft introduced to Burton while they were finishing The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In an unnamed Victorian town, Victor Van Dort, the son of nouveau riche fish merchants, and Victoria Everglot, the neglected daughter of impoverished aristocrats, prepare for their arranged marriage, which will simultaneously raise the social class of the Van Dort family and restore the wealth of the Everglot family ("According to Plan").

Fleeing to a nearby forest, he successfully rehearses his vows with a tree and places his wedding ring on what appears to be an upturned root.

However, the "root" is revealed to be the skeletal finger of a deceased woman named Emily, who, gowned in a wedding dress, rises from the grave and proclaims herself as Victor's new wife.

During his time with Emily, Victor learns that she was murdered years earlier on the night of her elopement by her fiancé, who stole the family jewels and gold she had brought ("Remains of the Day").

Before the pair can share a kiss, Emily discovers them and, feeling betrayed and hurt, drags Victor back to the Land of the Dead ("Tears to Shed").

The dead swiftly prepare for the ceremony and head "upstairs" ("The Wedding Song"), where the town erupts into a temporary panic upon their arrival until the living recognize their departed loved ones and joyously reunite with them.

The chaos causes a panicked Barkis to expose his own poor financial standing and his intentions to marry Victoria only for her supposed wealth, leading her to reject him.

As she steps into the moonlight, she transforms into a swarm of butterflies that fly into the sky as Victor and Victoria watch and embrace, happily knowing Emily has finally found eternal peace.

[6] The three primary characters—Victor, Victoria and Corpse Bride—were fitted with heads the size of golf balls that contained special gearing to allow the animators to manipulate individual parts of the puppets' faces.

[6] Each camera was outfitted with a "grabber" system that enabled the animators to capture frames and download them into a computer to assemble a short "reel" of the shot being produced to check their work.

[6] Once a shot was approved, the computer was removed and the animators were left to shoot the scene using their still camera and "grabber" computer/camera system to check their work.

"[6] Cinematographer Pete Kozachik explained: "The color cube is a 3-D lookup table created by FilmLight Ltd. that forces the image data into behaving like a particular Eastman Kodak film stock—in this case, 5248, one of my favorites.

[6] Pete Kozachik explained that the trick for shooting the characters by themselves was obtaining visually interesting shots that would dependably support the director's storytelling, saying: "The challenge is keeping the action clear and simple with lighting and composition.

The website's critics consensus reads, "As can be expected from a Tim Burton movie, Corpse Bride is whimsically macabre, visually imaginative, and emotionally bittersweet.

[18] Justin Chang of Variety gave the film a positive review, saying, "This macabre musical about a young bridegroom who mistakenly weds a girl from beyond the grave is an endearingly schizoid Frankenstein of a movie, by turns relentlessly high-spirited and darkly poignant.

"[19] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, calling it "A wondrous flight of fancy, a stop-motion-animated treat brimming with imaginative characters, evocative sets, sly humor, inspired songs and a genuine whimsy that seldom finds its way into today's movies.

"[20] Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice gave the film a positive review, saying, "The variety of its cadaverous style is never less than inspired; never has the human skull's natural grin been redeployed so exhaustively for yuks.

"[21] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B, saying, "As an achievement in macabre visual wizardry, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride has to be reckoned some sort of marvel.

"[22] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave the film four out of five stars, saying, "Cinema's reinvigorated fixation with the living dead suggests that we are in the grip of an impossible longing, or perhaps it's just another movie cycle running its course.

Whatever the case, there is something heartening about Mr. Burton's love for bones and rot here, if only because it suggests, despite some recent evidence, that he is not yet ready to abandon his own dark kingdom.

"[23] Moira MacDonald of The Seattle Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying, "What makes Corpse Bride sing, ultimately, is the breadth of imagination that it demonstrates; creating a cluttered, textured and mysteriously beautiful world that we're loathe to leave at the end.

"[20] Jack Mathews of the New York Daily News gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying, "Stop-motion animation may be the hardest and most tedious job in Hollywood, but the makers of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride deserve a couple of years in Tahiti celebrating their effort.

"[20] Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch gave the film a B+, saying, "Beneath the bone pile of allusions, Corpse Bride is a darkly enchanting fable in its own right.

"[26] Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel gave the film four out of five stars, saying, "The sweetness, the visual flourishes and inspired pieces of casting carry the Corpse Bride, if not all the way down the primrose path, then at least across the threshold.

"[27] Robert K. Elder of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying, "If Nightmare Before Christmas was a jazzy pop number, Corpse Bride is a waltz—an elegant, deadly funny bit of macabre matrimony.

"[20] Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying, "Corpse Bride is an unexpectedly touching celebration of love told in a quirky and inventive style.

"[20] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying, "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is easily the best stop-motion animated necrophiliac musical romantic comedy of all time.

"[20] Michael Booth of The Denver Post gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying, "Corpse Bride will win your heart, if it doesn't rip it out of your chest first.

"[30] Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "There's a happy Halloween in store even for children who aren't allowed to trick or treat, and it's courtesy of Tim Burton's animated Corpse Bride.