THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS REVIEW

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is, not only one of his best films, but a great film to watch during Halloween. This is because it's original in terms of its characters and the story and is also a visually delightful work of stop-motion animation.

Jack Skellington (voice of Danny Elfman) is the pumpkin king of Halloweentown but is bored with doing the same things repeatedly every year for Halloween. One day, he stumbles into Christmas Town and is so taken by the idea of Christmas that he tries to get the resident bats, ghouls, and goblins of Halloween town to help him put on Christmas instead of Halloween but they can't get it quite right.

The film is aimed at viewers of all ages, however, young children may be frightened by some of the characters that feature in this film. Of course, this being a Halloween film, there are a few minor scares, some of which comes from the film's villain, Oogie Boogie (Ken Page). If you're concerned about your child watching this, I'd advise watching this film beforehand so you can decide for yourself if it's too scary.

This is, by far, one of the most original Halloween-based films I've watched. I can't believe that I had this DVD on my shelf for years and didn't watch it until a few years ago because I was worried it'd be 'boring'. The characters, songs and visuals are where the film succeeds the most. Of course, the character that stands out is Jack and, the scene where he discovers Christmas Town is one of my favourites as he sings 'What's This?' which is an original song by Elfman. We, as an audience, already know about Christmas but it's fun watching him learn about the festive holiday and we chuckle when he mistakenly refers to Santa Claus as 'Sandy Claws'. Another character I enjoyed watching was Sally (Catherine O'Hara) who is in love with Jack but rarely gets noticed by him and is forced to work for an Evil Scientist (William Hickey) who treats her really badly. This makes her sympathetic and we want her to end up with Jack as we can clearly see how much she loves him.

Stunning visuals are important when making a successful Halloween film. Halloween is all about scares and the atmosphere being dark. Fortunately, The Nightmare Before Christmas' visuals are perfect. The colours used are mainly dark blue, black and grey to emphasize the darkness surrounding Halloween town. This is a complete contrast to Christmas Town which is full of festive colours including red, blue and white. 

Elfman is known for writing and scoring a lot of Burton's films and that's no different here. Not only is he the voice of the main character but he wrote the songs that are featured in this film too. I loved the film's opening song 'This Is Halloween' and 'What's This?' as they're both catchy but the song that stood out to me is 'Sally's Song' which is perfectly sung by O'Hara as you can really hear the emotion in her voice and made me feel sadness during this scene.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a perfect Halloween film as it succeeds in every aspect including its characters, story, visual effects and songs.

8/10