The Nightmare Before Christmas: When Halloween Nicked Christmas and Made It Better

You know those overly sweet Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, or anything that smells like cinnamon and regret? The ones where everyone sings about joy while looking like they’ve been mainlining sugar since November? Right. Now imagine tossing one of those into a blender with a haunted house, a corpse bride, and Tim Burton’s teenage sketchbook. Outcomes: The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film where Christmas gets drunk, falls into a coffin, and decides to stay because the décor is nicer.

It’s stop-motion animation, which means an army of lunatics spent two years moving puppets one blink at a time. You’d have to be either an artist or completely deranged to do that, and thankfully, they were both. Tim Burton dreamt it all up, slapped his name on it in giant gothic letters, and wandered off to film Batman Returns. The poor bloke who actually made it work was Henry Selick, the genius who turned Burton’s doodles into moving nightmares. It’s like saying you cooked dinner when really it was the oven doing all the work while you stood there with a glass of wine.

The story is gloriously mad. Jack Skellington, a skeletal stick in a tuxedo, runs Halloween Town but gets bored of frightening people and decides to hijack Christmas. His idea of festive cheer includes ghostly reindeer, gifts that bite, and a kidnapped Santa Claus. It’s basically Elf if Buddy the Elf had died and come back slightly resentful.

Visually, it’s classic Burton. The trees look angry, the snow falls like dandruff from a ghoul, and everyone looks stitched together by someone who failed sewing class but passed necromancy. Yet somehow it’s adorable, the kind of adorable that might still eat your cat if you turned your back.

Then there’s Danny Elfman, the man who writes music like a haunted carnival on fire. His soundtrack is pure brilliance. “This Is Halloween” is a dark anthem for every weirdo who refuses to take down decorations in November, “What’s This?” sounds like Christmas on caffeine, and “Sally’s Song” could make even Dracula sob quietly into his cape.

Disney, of course, took one look and panicked. A skeleton kidnaps Santa. There’s a villain made of bugs. Someone has an axe stuck in his head. This was not your usual Disney tea party. So they quietly released it under Touchstone Pictures, the label they use when they want to look edgy without terrifying small children.

For a while, it lurked in the shadows like a forgotten ghost. Then it rose again, more popular than ever, now adored by both goths and grandmothers. People argue endlessly about whether it’s a Christmas or Halloween movie. The answer is simple. Yes.

I revisited it after so many years, and it’s still pure magic. In fact, the remastered version in Dolby Atmos and 4K is even better. The sound wraps around you like a mischievous ghost, Elfman’s orchestra bursts through your living room, and every whisper, creak, and cackle feels alive. It’s like being dropped straight into Halloween Town with surround sound and a pulse.

They tried making a 3D version once, which added about as much as sunglasses add to a mole. Stick with the remaster. That’s where it truly shines.

So here we are. The Nightmare Before Christmas is strange, twisted, funny, and beautiful. It’s the perfect film for anyone who hangs fairy lights on a coffin and thinks “Sandy Claws” sounds perfectly reasonable. It’s weird, wonderful, and slightly deranged, which makes it perfect.

Five stars, because any film that convinces you a skeleton can save Christmas while singing deserves eternal applause and maybe a glass of eggnog served in a skull.