MOVIE REVIEW: NIGHTMARE

LINC LUKE | STAFF WRITERMOVIE REVIEW: NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

With Halloween past and the holiday season just about to turn the corner, now’s as good a time as any to ask the ageold question: Is the Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? If you’ve been living under a rock for the past 30 years, you may have missed the release of this classic film made by Tim Burton. The story follows a skeleton living in the town of Halloween as the ‘Pumpkin King’ to a rowdy group of citizens, ranging from vampires to werewolves to demons to the boogie man. Feeling unfulfilled with his own holiday and by extension his life at this point, Jack Skellington travels across the inter-dimensional portals of holiday seasons to find what heals the hole in his chest. He finds something significantly brighter and cheerier than his hometown, something jolly and festive that he doesn’t yet understand. In fact, none of Halloween Town understands but are more than willing to steal Christmas for their own. But, *spoiler alert*, it doesn’t work out and kidnapping ‘Sandy Claws’ was maybe not the best idea. However, there’s always a happy ending isn’t there?

Now, let’s focus on what makes this film a Halloween movie. Obviously, the movie starts off in Halloween town with a song called ‘This is Halloween’ where they celebrate the terrible deeds, they did this year to celebrate Halloween and introduce the watchers to the terrifying characters and setting. The citizens of Halloween Town are all ecstatic and seem to love their holiday, the only one who doesn’t is Jack, but we can talk about that later. Now even while they are trying to steal Christmas, they are doing it in an endearingly wrong way that really screams Halloween. They replace presents of dolls and toys into snakes and haunted ducks that rotate their heads 360 degrees. Obviously, things that are traumatizing to the children all over the world. They even replace Santa’s sled with a coffin and skeletons of Reindeer. In the end, when Jack finds his love for Halloween again and saves Sally and Sandy Claws (I left out a lot of details of this movie solely, so you’ll want to watch it because it is a serious cinematic masterpiece), Halloween Town is back in full swing, replacing merry to malicious as they already start their plans for next Halloween. Scenically, the majority of the movie is set in Halloween Town, a dark and dull place if we really want to analyze the cinematic works of Tim Burton (which if you want to hear about, come find me, I will indulge that conversation for all It’s worth), but the fact that so much of the setting is in Halloween Town and most of the story surrounds characters who only know Halloween shows that Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas is a Hall-

Not so fast. Let’s look at the argument for it being a Christmas movie. The main focus of the story? Stealing Christmas. Practically the whole story is about trying to take over Christmas and visiting Christmas Town and trying to recreate Christmas (even in a Halloween-ish way). The ending of the movie is about how Christmas is saved and order is restored between the holidays. Sure, the citizens of Halloween made Christmas very Halloween-like, but do they really have any other choice? All they know is Halloween and they hadn’t even heard of Christmas before Jack brought it to their town. They did their best to make a holiday that they didn’t understand and while it wasn’t perfect, it was…. technically it was Christmas. They made presents and delivered them to all the boys and girls so who can really blame them. Also, the name Christmas is in the name of the movie, Halloween is not. From the get-go, most people who haven’t seen the movie would assume that this movie would be a Christmas movie, just from the title.

Personally, I think that it can count for both. Tim Burton himself believes that it is a Halloween movie but why stop at Halloween when a movie can count for more than one holiday, especially a cinematic masterpiece such as the Nightmare Before Christmas.

| OPINION |