Each October when I was a child, as pumpkins went on sale and ghosts started appearing on catalogs and magazines and in TV ads, I settled into an annual Halloween reverie.
I’d draw elaborate (though terribly unskilled) pictures of haunted houses and the creepy things that supposedly lurked upstairs, in the basement, and out in the graveyards. I’d hunch over the papers, dreaming up new dungeons and secret attics. There was nothing so satisfying as the chill of scaring myself.
Now my son is threading his way through the same happy pumpkin patch, drawing bats and witches and ghosts and hanging them on the windows, outside on the fence, next to his bed. That’s why I’m recommending “The Nightmare Before Christmas” as this week’s family film, because it appears that Tim Burton did the same thing throughout his childhood — but with more artistic flair.
“Nightmare” uses Burton’s distinctive crowded, stop-motion sets to first focus on Halloween Town. Our hero Jack Skellington is tired of running the world’s spookiest Halloween celebration. He accidentally opens a portal to Christmas Town, and is sentimentally attracted to the snow, the lighted trees, the blazing fires. He decides on a hostile takeover of Christmas.
Burton’s schematics are rewardingly rich depictions, first of multi-layered Halloween creeps, and later of Christmas nostalgia. Bugs flow out of cupcakes, gifts pile up under evergreens — something will catch your eye from every corner.
The plot is also embellished with songs, as “Nightmare” is very nearly a musical. The lyricism and longing from Jack and his companions adds a romantic layer to the proceedings that turns “Nightmare” into a tale for anyone aged 6 to 46.
