For all those that celebrate it, who doesn’t love Christmas? One of the happiest times of the year where people come together and celebrate everything joyful, forgiving, and wondrous about the world (when it’s not spent frantically being cramped in a shopping centre mall trying desperately to obtain the latest popular toy). It has all the great festive decorations, presents for the young ones who don’t understand the true meaning yet, and is home to a ton of nostalgic movie specials that will always stay in your brain whether for legitimate or ironic reasons. This appreciation can also be spoken about Halloween; a time of spooks and cries of terror, the night where everyone can appreciate a little scare with autumn colors, creepy stories, and plenty of merchandising to sell before it’s immediately taken down for the next holiday. While these two holidays seem like polar opposite, it took the brilliance of Henry Selick with help from visionary director Tim Burton and writer Michael McDowell to bring the world something truly special that brought both seasons together in a way that people wouldn’t easily forget. This of course was the 1993 cult classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas. In a fantasy land where each holiday is given its own world, Halloweentown is recently celebrating their latest success for the year.  Out of all the ghosts and ghouls of the town, Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon) is the king of Halloweentown and is adored by all its residents, but he has started to feel an emptiness from the abundant repetitive nature of his job and the Halloween season in general. Through some wandering, he encounters the different holiday trees and winds up in Christmastown, instantly falling in love with the holiday and its merriment. Believing he’s found the answer to his boredom, he desires to take over Christmas for himself and lovingly kidnaps Santa Clause (voiced by Ed Ivory) in order to make the delivery himself. While he’s full of optimism and cheer, his close friend Sally (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) fears what could come from this shake-up, but these aren’t enough to stop Jack’s passion who fails to realize the confusion and panic that his Christmas is going to cause. A film that is regarded as both a Christmas classic AND a Halloween classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a wonderfully original film that managed to surprise people even during one of Disney’s strongest periods. While certainly simple with its story and characters, the film’s masterful visuals, fantastically catchy songs, and delightfully quick-to-grasp morals and characters makes it a delight to return to year after year.

The funny thing about this movie is that despite later becoming such a phenomenon of the holiday seasons, this was not an accurate representation of the reception it initially received at the time. The movie was not a box office success when it first came out but would later become a moderate sleeper hit and earn $101.2 million against a $24 million budget and it would eventually receive critical praise and slowly develop a cult following, which then led to its classic placement. The film’s colorfully imaginative visuals and amazingly creative ideas would lure people in easily after the initial skepticism and for a time when Disney was still continuing their format of basing their stories off of classical literature, this story is refreshingly original and strange to boot, not being based on anything aside from a small poem written by Burton himself years prior. The direction by Sellick melds this story created by Burton into a showcase of what people love about both seasons and their respective attributes, blending both into an amalgam of wonderful creations that both haunt and delight the senses while still being able to entertain on a mainstream level. The visuals perfectly illustrate both seasons through color, lighting, atmosphere, and of course spirit, highlighting the importance and enjoyability of both, while also showing the separation between the two. It has the macabre angles, themes, and creatures perfect for a Halloween set-up, but it also has the wonderful colors and charming simplicity of a Christmas tale. Its simplicity is where the movie really shines and, ironically enough, falls a bit behind. The movie’s brilliant concept matched with its quick to grasp characters and beyond simple writing makes it feel very much like several other classic Christmas tales and specials that manage to say a lot with a very straightforward delivery. Films of this type share a similarly basic narrative, but are all packed with charm, a completely timeless narrative, and focus more on showing off their messages rather than complex stories, which is much easier to portray through such a simple framework. The script for this movie written by Caroline Thompson has very direct dialogue, obvious character arcs and a direction that is more so driven by emotion rather than a lot of plot, but it allows the creativity of the world, the effectiveness of the message and the likability of the characters to pull through and make for a charming experience. On the other hand, at a time where Disney was going beyond what was normally expected of them and stepping over common kids’ movie boundaries, for something like this to come out of the same time with its simple approach and childishly easy to understand moral, it’s no wonder the movie wasn’t as well received to begin with. This doesn’t make it a bad movie by any means, but risks can make a big difference when making a film.

The characters, much like the actual story, are pretty basic and don’t have a lot to them outside of their wants and desires. In spite of this, they do well work within this story and portray the film’s themes and ideas very effectively. Since the message is all about learning to appreciate the simple pleasures of life and understanding the limits someone can push themselves onto something that doesn’t fit them before it ruins it for others, the simple characters are easily able to convey said message even stronger because of how they can characterize them and connect it back to the essence of the morals. What does elevate these characters over being just standard cut-outs to showcase a morals are the actors. They can verbally emote their way through their characters to make them that much more interesting, alive with personality, and colorfully memorable that way. Each one is very good at displaying their assigned roles and all fit perfectly into a Halloween-type movie setting, as each one sounds appropriately whimsical yet exaggeratedly ghostly. Even despite that, each has something special that stands out about them. Jack is likeably passionate about his desire to either spread cheer or drear and watching him as Santa is quite infectious due to his hopeful want to make a good night even when it goes up in flames. Both Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman (who provides the singing voice for Jack) are great at not only matching each other’s tones and inflections when portraying the character, but also do a lot to add to his personality and make him a great character to watch. Sally is noticeably crafty and while not allowed to provide much outside of the opposite side to Jack’s blind optimism, her inclusion is felt, and she is a likeable character to follow and is not just resorted to a one-note stick-in-the-mud. Most of the other denizens of Halloweentown are wonderfully designed and home to enjoyably odd voices with recognizable talents like William Hickey and Glenn Shadix, but they don’t play too much into the film and mainly remain as background decoration for the world (which is honestly fine as they do pretty good at that). The film throws a last-minute villain into the picture with Oogie Boogie, (voiced by Ken Page), and while the character has a fun design, and is pretty fun to watch, this movie doesn’t really feel like it needed a villain, and his abrupt appearance doesn’t help his standings much.

The imagery in this movie is beyond impressive, gives the film a strikingly unique style that screams of its creatives, and does wonders at being hypnotizing from both an enchanting and a gothic level. The stop motion predominantly used in most of Henry Selick’s work fits right at home in this creepy charming tale, and Burton’s fingerprints are also all over this environment through the unique color palette, odd character designs, and gothic yet surreal architectural designs of the locations and even just the landscapes (that spiral hill from the poster is an iconic image all on its own and is so Burton). The sets are very large and impressive in scale, giving some great memorable locations and set pieces that are filled with great detail and attention, the colors match each location perfectly with the harsh black and pumpkin orange of Halloweentown offset by the bright primary colors and soft whites of Christmastown, all the models on every character feels straight out of a Halloween fable with creative imagery to back it up, and this style of stop-motion only helps to elevate its timeless appeal, it’s a style that never ages and can be appreciated by anyone. With visuals like this, it only makes senses that the music would also be one of the movie’s finest attributes. Danny Elfman produced all the songs for this movie, and he knocks it out of the park as usual with such iconic songs that everybody knows off by heart by know. The lyrics are wonderfully lyrical and fancy, the visuals match the numbers absolutely perfectly, the singing (whether sung well or awkwardly) always adds to the mood of each moment, they do a good job at leading the film forward, there’s a nice mix of songs that can range from slow and heartfelt, to fast and striking, to quirky and funny, which very clearly presents the tone of the film, and they just act as incredibly catchy numbers which can be listened to outside of the film and still be great.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a great Halloween movie, a great Christmas movie, and an all-around great movie in general, holding up quite well all these years later and working within and outside of the seasons. It’s not complex, but it could be argued it’s better that way as it keeps itself simple enough for both kids and adults to enjoy, but still features enough creativity to increase the intrigue levels, as well as a lesson told in a brilliant way. The story is unique and excellently strange, the characters are likeable and are memorable despite being pretty clean-cut, the visuals are outstanding, the songs are incredible, the writing is basic but has a way of conveying its message in a strong way, and it’s a completely timeless product. The movie maybe could have benefited from taking more risks and maybe there will be future versions and adaptations that do so, but it works for creating the style of a Christmas classic which this movie easily fits into. Definitely worth a viewing and witnessing all the effort put into it. A perfect movie to watch when things go bump in the night AND when it’s time to wait for Santa to arrive, it’s a scarily good holiday film.

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