12/5-The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Ah, yes, the eternal struggle with The Nightmare Before Christmas, is it a Halloween movie?  Is it a Christmas movie?  Or shockingly, is it somehow both?!

Facetiousness aside, I did think about watching this during my scary movie adventure, but in the end, I knew it wasn't wasn't that scary.  Slightly disturbing and a little morbid, yes, but it's also has this endearing quality to all of the horrible monsters; they're cute, essentially.  Morbid-orable really.

Ugh, it can literally never close its mouth,
but goddamn, I wanna snuggle it.

I'd also seen this film before, which I had been trying to avoid with the horror movies.  And that brings up an interesting schism between the genres.  Horror thrives on the fear of the unknown, which knowing what will happen from a previous viewing can ruin.  Whereas feel-good movies like ones focused on the holidays feed on happier emotions like joy.  And one of the best methods of evoking joy is through nostalgia, which rewatching a movie you like can easily instill.

Point is, regardless of Halloween or Christmas, this movie is most certainly a holiday movie, and that's what this whole blog is about: holiday movies.  And in case you need more proof it's a holiday movie, here's the opening scene (starting at 0:54.  You will also be treated to a jaunty tune if you keep watching.)

As you likely just heard if you watched the video, this movie is a musical.  But not only that, it's an awesome musical composed by Danny Elfman; you may remember him from achievements such as doing the music for The Simpsons and being a member of Oingo Boingo.  Most people will recognize "This is Halloween" or "What's this?" but every song is catchy and various levels of haunting.  Jack's Lament in particular is infinitely hummable.

But without further ado, let's talk about the movie itself.  The movie begins with Halloween Town celebrating Halloween, only to begin preparations for next year's festivities.  Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King (which no context is given to what this actually entails.  Like everyone looks up to him and he can persuade a whole town to change holidays [more on that later], but there's also a mayor who is "in charge."  It's just weird), clearly feels the monotony of it all.  And after lamenting himself through the forest, he stumbles upon the circle of holiday trees.  Choosing the Christmas door, seemingly at random, he's transported to a magical world of snow and joy and merriment.

Enamored by the concepts of Christmas that he discovers, he decides that he wants to do Christmas for the people of Christmas Town.  He enlists the help of Halloween Town to aid him in this endeavor, but although they are eager to help, they clearly still have a morbid side to them.  For example one of the townsfolk tries to wrap a turtle who's been run over.  In Halloween Town, that's a great gift, but not so much for a child in Christmas Town.

So Jack takes all his horror toys made by the fine monsters of Halloween Town and departs on his yuletide journey to bring happiness to the little children.  But as you can likely guess, they don't take kindly to the shrunken heads and the like.  The town goes on high alert as it attempts to stop this impostor Santa, going as far as literally shooting Jack out of the skies.

There's truly some beautiful imagery in the movie.

Now, one thing that I still don't really get is in this universe where these holiday towns exist, is there a just normal people world?  When Santa-Jack does his Christmas flight, we delivers to what looks like a typical American neighborhood.  And if that's the case, that there is this "real world" that tethers the holiday worlds together, why is it that the champion of Christmas, Santa, goes each year to the real world, bringing his magic and presents into reality, but the people of Halloween Town seem to just celebrate for their own sake.  Jack doesn't make a yearly venture into reality, bringing candy and fear to the little children, so why Santa?  And presumably, the Easter Bunny does as well.

I don't really have a point with this, I just think that it's interesting that the whole plot of the movie focuses on Jack being essentially bored with the self-serving basis for Halloween, as they simply do it for themselves.  Perhaps if Jack were to bring their Halloween to the real world, and have the reaction from real children, he would have that sense of fulfillment that Santa and his workers get each Christmas.

So in the end, Jack rescues Santa from Oogie Boogie (oh yeah, that happened, there was a whole song about.  Actually, two songs.) and Santa, although still kind of pissed about the whole kidnapping thing, reconciles with Jack and takes off to fix Christmas.  But as he leaves, it begins to snow, as if to say, I forgive you, Halloween Town.  Or, it's his way of saying fuck you.  I suppose it's open to interpretation, but I like the former.

Rating on the feel-good-o-meter: 7 out of 10 hugs (Fair warning, it's probably more like 5 or 6, but remember when I talked about nostalgia impacting the feel-goods?  Well, yeah, I'm biased with this one, so hurumph)