Film

Burke & Hare

Name: Burke & Hare
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Romance
Released: 2010
Cast: Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Isla Fisher, Georgia King, Tom Wilkinson

Serial killer

Burke & Hare is John Landis's comic caper about two 19th-century con men who turn to serial murder to keep their cadaver-supply business afloat. It's a darkly funny romp that treats horrific history as playground material, mixing slapstick with genuine menace. For viewers who like their true crime both gruesome and silly.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy dark farce where two bickering schemers treat murder as a sideline to a tidy business, and Pegg and Serkis's double act makes the grim premise go down easily.

Skip it if you want the murders to land with weight, since the film keeps its victims at arm's length and the jokes rarely pause for anyone's pain.

What it asks of you: Ninety-one minutes, brisk and jaunty, with the tone shifting between a romance subplot and grisly comedy, so keep up rather than settle in.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street2007

Tim Burton's theatrical adaptation of the Sondheim musical; gruesome murders, gorgeous production design, and Johnny Depp at his most delightfully unhinged. Dark comedy with real craft.

But The theatrical singing will feel out of place if you want straightforward horror. It's deliberately artificial rather than immersive.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street poster

In Bruges2008

Two hitmen hide in a medieval Belgian city after a job goes wrong. Darkly funny, viscerally violent, and unexpectedly touching. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are superb.

But The dialogue is aggressively clever and can feel self-conscious. Some find its tonal shifts—between comedy and genuine sadness—jarring rather than brilliant.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang2005

Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in a Los Angeles noir-comedy where a petty criminal becomes a movie extra and stumbles into actual murder. Snappy, metafictional, and outrageously entertaining.

But The narrative is deliberately convoluted and the fourth-wall breaking won't work for everyone. It demands active viewing, not passive consumption.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Burke & Hare

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Anatomy2000

Both use the historical tension between medical advancement and the bodies required to achieve it, but Anatomy weaponizes that horror while Burke & Hare jokes about it.

A German medical-school thriller about dissecting bodies that turn out to be secretly murdered people. It shares Burke & Hare's fascination with anatomy as moral trap but plays it completely straight—tense, unsettling, architecturally brilliant.

But It's a serious thriller with no comedy whatsoever and surgical precision that some will find glacial. The body horror is genuinely disturbing, not play-acted.

Shaun of the Dead2004

The template for blending genre convention with genuine comedy. Three friends deal with a zombie outbreak in suburban London. Smart, quotable, and sneakily moving.

But If you don't engage with the cultural references or British humor rhythms, it can feel slight. The jokes land hardest for those who know what it's riffing on.

Seven Psychopaths2012

Colin Farrell stumbles into a serial killer war in Los Angeles. Violent, clever, genuinely hilarious, and self-aware about its own excess. Sam Rockwell is magnetic chaos.

But It's aggressively meta and occasionally indulgent about its own cleverness. Some violence exists mainly to be shocking rather than meaningful.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil2010

Two hillbillies are mistaken for killers by college kids who then accidentally massacre themselves. A genre-deconstruction comedy that's way smarter than it sounds and genuinely hilarious.

But The premise, while clever, needs the joke to work for you; if it doesn't land in the first five minutes, the film won't recover that ground.

The Death of Stalin2017

Armando Iannucci's mockumentary-style black comedy about the power struggle following Stalin's death. Brilliantly written, impeccably cast, absurdist without losing historical teeth.

But It's dialogue-heavy and the rapid-fire overlapping British comedians playing Soviet officials requires sharp attention. Not a comfortable watch.

Eating Raoul1982

A prudish married couple kill swingers for money during the sexual revolution. Wildly original cult classic that somehow balances exploitation and genuine satire with weird affection.

But The budget is minimal, the pacing is strange, and the tone will feel genuinely alien to modern audiences. It's genuinely obscure for good reason—not everyone.

Fido2006

In a retro-fifties town where zombies are domesticated pets, a boy and his zombie best friend go on adventures. A touching exploration of friendship wrapped in a candy-colored horror-comedy premise.

But The quirk can feel forced, and the tonal shifts between childlike wonder and zombie gore don't always cohere. Some find it precious rather than clever.

The Knick2014

Same era of medicine, same moral murkiness about what we'll do to bodies in pursuit of progress, but approached with documentary seriousness rather than dark comedy.

Steven Soderbergh's ten-episode miniseries about a pioneering surgeon in 1900s New York operating at the boundaries of human knowledge. Visually inventive, morally complicated, genuinely gripping. Clive Owen is hypnotic.

But It's grim. People suffer and die. The second season got canceled, so you'll end on incompleteness. The medical procedures are graphic in ways that disturb rather than excite.

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Both are historical comedies that work because of their era, but this one discards the comedy entirely—showing what the 1800s actually demanded of people, not what we find funny about them.

A woman survives by posing as a man in the Old West. Maggie Chin's film is austere, gorgeous, and carries genuine weight—a frontier story about survival and identity with no irony in sight.

But It's slow, painterly, and deliberately unglamorous about frontier life. If you want action or a clear narrative arc, this isn't it. Historical weight can feel like a burden.