I finally watched: 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'

This morning on the news I heard that The Nightmare Before Christmas is among the 25 films being added to the National Film Registry this year, which reminded me…

With the day off on Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2022, I decided to sit back and finally watch it. Released in 1993, The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of a couple Halloween cult classics from my youth (the other being Hocus Pocus, IMHO, which was released the same year) and I have been wondering what all the fuss is about.

Jack Skellington, the King of Halloween Town, becomes bored of Halloween. When he stumbles upon another holiday village called Christmas Town, he becomes obsessed and decides to take over Christmas. His scheme turns out to be a disaster and he has a change of heart in the nick of time.

Though I did not take any notes and over a year has passed since my viewing, a couple things have stuck with me, including my overall impression: Huh?

It did not do it for me. The appeal of the movie escaped me; I am not a member of the Nightmare cult … which saddened me because I really wanted to like it. I love Halloween and really wanted to be enamored with a movie released during the halcyon autumn in my youth. But it did not happen. Perhaps I had an unrealistic expectation. Perhaps it did not register because I watched it for the first time as an adult. Would it have been different if I saw it for the first time when I was 10/11, the fall it was released? Maybe.

That said, I feel like Nightmare is hit or miss depending on the person. I found it weird and disturbing, which is probably on par with any Tim Burton movie I have seen. (I love that line from Ted Lasso: “I hope y’all drank a lot of water today ‘cause y’all are gonna be so dehydrated, that you’re gonna look like one of them trees from a Tim Burton movie.”) The entire time while watching it, I thought about the parents who took their children to see it in the theater in 1993. Did they know what they were getting into? How many kids grabbed their mom or dad’s arm and said in a confused and frightened tone, “I don’t like this movie”? How many families packed up their stuff and left? I’m unsure. It was a different era. I have not heard anyone say the movie is too scary for kids, and perhaps that is another expectation of mine that is off the mark. My five-year-old nephew loves Nightmare and dressed up as Jack Skellington for Halloween last year. I am unsure, though, what my five-year-old daughter thinks about it or if she has even seen it. (I don’t think she would like it. Tense parts of Turning Red make her so uncomfortable that she wants to watch something else.)

However, I don’t want my opinion, rhetorical wondering, and lack of interest/connection to overshadow the movie’s artistic value. It is well done and I really appreciated the work and attention to detail. Films made using stop-motion photography are a wonder to behold. I once read that Nightmare took something like four years to make. It was a labor of love for entire teams of movie workers for a long time, and their work has stood the test of time and no doubt deserves the recognition by being added to the National Film Registry.

It’s just not my thing, unfortunately.