Director: Harry Selick
Year: 1993
Country: US
Language: English
Harry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas defies holiday genre films. Is it a Christmas film or a Halloween film? Surely great arguments could be made on either side, I would say that it is suitable for both holidays. I would much prefer seeing this over Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life during Christmas season. Strangely, the first time I saw it was Christmas eve when I was about 10 years old. Expecting the usual Disney-like cartoon, I was quite shocked and somewhat horrified by how different this Burton's creation looked compared to everything else I have seen. When I see it I am reminded by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in how different the aesthetics are.
The film is about Jack Skellington (Danny Elfman) who is the king of Halloweentown. Unfortunately he is completely bored of doing the same thing every year for Halloween. One day he stumbles into Christmas Town and finds himself amazed with everything that goes on in there. When he comes back his own town he convinces all the ghouls, goblins and monsters to put up Christmas decorations and call their new holiday "Christmas" the town becomes confused and isn't really able to get anything quite right.
When directors approach the look and setting of a film they go for realistic places that the audience can recognize and relate to. Harry Selick completely throws that thought out the window and creates an unrecognizable landscape that intrigues our mind and puts our imagination into a frenzy. The world of Jack Skellington is both haunting and beautiful, strange yet captivating. Where traditional animation at that time was hand drawn, the animation presented here is called "stop-action animation" and it allows for an incredible three-dimensional world to be shown.
The film is charming and enjoyable, there is humor but it doesn't come from cheap one liners nor is the film consistently trying to make us laugh. The songs are a clear reflection of the mood range, in one scene we hear Jack singing a long sorrowful song and in another we hear the delightfully energetic song by the Oogie Boogie Man. Despite the "scary" Halloween images, Nightmare will bring entertainment to both children and adults because it never excludes nor panders to either generation. It is one of the rare animated films that can be loved by any age of person.
In conclusion, though the morals of this film seem poorly executed there is very little doubt that The Nightmare Before Christmas is a visually unique film from a veteran in stop motion animation, Director (Harry Selick) and a Producer (Tim Burton) who clearly went insane after producing this film. This is quite an achievement, hopefully it becomes both a Halloween and Christmas tradition for television stations to play. 3.5/5
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