“How horrible our Christmas will be!”
The Nightmare Before Christmas is so charming – and fun, and sweet, and scary, and smart – that it’s easy to see why people remain obsessed with this movie 23 years after its release. Musicals have to create a world in which breaking into song is not only expected or encouraged, but actually anticipated. The Nightmare Before Christmas achieves this easily. In his original review of the film, Roger Ebert praised the fact that nothing looks real, which is a good way to describe the aesthetic. It’s unabashedly a fairy tale, built around a frankly ingenious conceit.
Each major holiday has its own town dedicated to its celebration – Thanksgiving Town, Easter Town, et cetera (I imagine the mayor of St. Patrick’s Day town is just Shane MacGowan of the Pogues). Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon when he’s speaking, Danny Elfman when he’s singing) is the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, where every small child wanted to live immediately upon leaving the theater. After another successful Halloween, Jack finds himself in a state of ennui, bored of doing the same thing year after year. (This film probably introduced a lot of children to the concept of ambivalence.) He stumbles upon Christmas Town, run by Santa Claus, and decides that that’s what he wants to do instead.
Nightmare manages to be a love letter to both Halloween and Christmas, as well as musicals themselves; the gorgeous stop-motion animation is equal parts Ray Harryhausen and Rankin-Bass. In a sweet, sad way, Jack understands Christmas only on its surface: the presents, the tree, and so forth. He refers to Santa Claus as Sandy Claws, and calls him a “fearsome king with a deep, mighty voice.” But the film never condemns Jack for getting Christmas so wrong. It wants to teach kids that it’s okay to try something different, even if it’s strange or a little scary. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it exclusively. Jack steps far out of his comfort zone, and so do the citizens of Halloween Town, when he tries to replicate Christmas. He might take things a little too far when he has Santa kidnapped, though.
For a movie ostensibly marketed at kids, Nightmare has some surprisingly ghoulish imagery. The song “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” adds a real air of menace to the act, and the monstrous Oogie Boogie is one of my favorite villains in contemporary horror. Oogie Boogie is the film’s version of the Boogeyman, a sackcloth monstrosity filled with insects who has no real motivation in the film besides bringing bodily harm to Santa. As the embodiment of fear, Oogie doesn’t play fair, which speaks to the arbitrary nature of fears and anxieties. My favorite song is also the film’s scariest, the drowsy hoodoo of “Oogie Boogie’s Song,” made immortal by the vocals of Ken Page.
The songs in The Nightmare Before Christmas are, unsurprisingly, terrific. In my opinion it amounts to Danny Elfman’s finest work (although I do live his score for Milk) outside of his career with Oingo Boingo. Through Elfman’s music, the film is able to switch tones without giving the viewer whiplash, from the haunting, mournful “Jack’s Lament” to the joyously inquisitive “What’s This?” The latter is the film’s most famous song, and for good reason. Like all great musicals, Nightmare makes it, at times, impossible to keep from smiling.
This is unmistakably a Tim Burton film, full of stripes, spirals, curlicues, and all the other usual Burton bullshit, but it wouldn’t look or feel as good as it does without director Henry Selick. Selick is the stop-motion guru best known for James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and for creating the fantastical undersea creatures in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Selick and his team of animators spent three years bringing Nightmare to life, and the painstaking effort is evident in every beautiful frame. I found myself giddy at the sight of Jack’s shadow – the level of detail is frankly astounding. Selick shoots Nightmare like it’s live-action, resulting in some genuinely stirring shots, such as Jack silhouetted in front of a giant yellow moon, or Sally nonchalantly stitching herself back together.
Ultimately, I think Jack fails to fully understand Christmas because it’s an experience unique to every child. We all celebrate in our own different ways, and there’s no proscribed or proper way to do it. Like Halloween, it means so much to so many, and The Nightmare Before Christmas is the rare film that seems to really understand that.
10/1: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
10/2: The Exorcist
10/3: Pontypool
10/4: Hocus Pocus
10/5: The Orphanage
10/6: Rosemary’s Baby
10/7: Alien
10/8: Scream series
10/9: Scream series
10/10: Cujo
10/11: The Cabin in the Woods
10/12: Pulse
10/13: The Babadook
10/14: Friday the 13th
10/15: The Last House on the Left (both versions)
10/16: The Thing (both versions)
10/17: Little Shop of Horrors
10/18: Hush
10/19: Silent Hill
10/20: The Shining
10/21: Funny Games (2007)
10/22: Evil Dead series
10/23: Evil Dead series
10/24: The Mist
10/25: The Ninth Gate
10/26: The Fly
10/27: A Nightmare on Elm Street
10/28: The Nightmare Before Christmas
10/29: 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later
10/30: It
10/31: Halloween (either version)
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