The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Review

As a rule, fantasy movies set at Christmas are usually cuddly, fluffy affairs with all the usual tropes delivered wrapped in a nice, safe, unthreatening bow. Christmas trees encircled in light and tinsel, a warming glow from a fire place, marshmallow-soft snow, it’s all as picturesque as a John Callcott Horsley painting adorning a Christmas card, so trust Tim Burton to unleash the contents of his absurdly kooky brain all over it.
While it seemed we lost The Nightmare Before Christmas to aspiring, twelve year-old goths there for a hot minute, Henry Selick’s animated opus not only helped blast a reviving bolt of Frankenstein-style lightning into the painstaking art of stop-motion animation, but it gave us a massively twisted take on Christmas that’s miraculously ok for the little ‘uns to watch despite featuring sadistic trick or treaters, clowns with tear away faces and a malevolent, sentient sack of bugs with a gambling problem.
It’s a Christmas miracle, by golly!

In the spooky realm of Halloween Town, its residents of creeps, freaks and monsters celebrate yet another successful year of scaring the beejeebers out of humans on Halloween night, but unbeknownst to them their beloved ruler – the long-legged mac-daddy known as Jack Skellington – is feeling pretty disillusioned.
Tired of doing the same old thing, year in, year out, the tuxedoed Pumpkin King seems to be going through something of a mid-life crisis as he struggles to regain the passion he once had for terrifying the crap out of people. An apparent solution appears in the shape of a selection of doors he stumbles upon one day in the middle of a brooding stroll that lead to other seasonal realms hes never heard of before and after a life-affirming stop by Crhistmas Town, he has something of a knee-jerk eureka moment.
Convinced that celebrating Christmas is the way forward for his confused, but ultimately trusting, people, Jack’s overexcited mania goes from him wanting to celebrate Christmas to actually taking it over, by “politely” abducting Santa and adding a Halloween twist to things. However, as well-intentioned as Jack’s efforts are, Sally, a patchwork creation of the clingy doctor Finkelstein, foresees that tragedy is on the horizon and matter almost immediately start spinning out of control when Jack tasks viciously mischievous trick or treaters Lock, Shock and Barrel to “take care” of Santa.
With Santa left in the company of the dangerous Oogie Boogie, Jack sets out to do his job complete with a red costume, a white beard and skeletal reindeer, but despite his well-meaning nature, the people of earth don’t take too kindly to this cackling pretender giving out scorpions and shrunken heads as presents.

While its public knowledge, despite Tim Burton’s incredibly recognizable visual stamp encompassing virtually every aspect to production (right down to freaky door knockers and spidery bow ties), the frizzy-haired auteur didn’t actually fully direct a full length stop-motion movie until The Corpse Bride over a decade later even though he was once hired as an animator at Disney and ons of his original short films was the stop motion Vincent back in 82. In actuality, while Burton loomed over every other aspect of the production like George Lucas did with Return Of The Jedi, the actual movie was helmed by Henry Selick who went on to deliver James And The Giant Peach, Coraline and the impressive misfire, Monkeybone. The reason this is somewhat ironic is that not only is The Nightmare Before Christmas practically a virtually perfect entry point into Burton’s gloriously eccentric world view, but it also may be the most Purge Burton-esque movie in existence outside the Play-Dough grotesqueries of Beetlejuice.
Still, Selick not only delivers some achingly gorgeous stop-motion cinematography, the surprisingly brief running time (mean and lean at under a trim hour and seventeen) moves like snow off of a spooky shovel as the story moves with relentless purpose. Boom, the introduction to the absurdly rich Halloween Town is placed front and centre; Pow, we move right into Jack’s malaise which rapidly segues into his discovery of Christmas Town with the show stopping “What’s This” and so on. Yes, there’s maybe so much plot progression it often overwhelms the characters, but The Nightmare Before Christmas meandering style means that while all of the arcs may be kind of rudimentary, the songs take up the slack just as much as the remarkable world building.

And it’s here where we address the movie’s most valuable asset – that of Burton’s regular composer Danny Elfman. While many have claimed that the movie is the ultimate showcase for both Burton’s kookily untethered imagination or the jerky pleasures of stop motion animation, I’ve always seen the film as a place where Elfman could finally let his distinctive themes dominate an entire production. Simply put, as important as Selick and Burton obviously are – not to mention a voice cast including Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Ruebens and Glen Shadix – the movie is literally powered on all levels by Elfman’s sensibilities. Not only does his songs move the plot along like every good musical, they also denote character changes, mood swings and even introductions of virtually the entire cast – Hell, Elfman even takes co-credit for the lead of the film as he provides Jack’s singing voice. Also, the composer manages to balance the innocence of all the Halloween characters as they struggle to understand such alien concepts as “nice” and such ominous songs as “This Is Halloween” and “Kidnap The Sandy Claws” balance to tone magnificently. The most Burton movie ever made? Try the most Elfman.
Finally, we get a clutch of memorable characters that have remained consistently popular thanks to a endless stream of merchandise but have never actually enjoyed a sequel. The well-meaning Jack, the lovelorn Sally, the petulant Oogie Boogie and the deranged Lock, Shock and Barrel still show up on backpacks and Pop Vinyls to this day and the movie was even blessed with a 3D re-release which has guaranteed that the creepy cast were given the longevity they richly deserved.

A genuine original that smartly doubles up as a seasonal treat for movie marathons both for the 31st of October and the 25th of December, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a refreshing change from the usual, saccharine, Xmas treats.

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