While most people equate dark with bad. Sometimes dark can be quite beautiful and genuine. In The Nightmare Before Christmas we definitely have a fleshed out story and universe where whole livelihoods exist on a few main holidays and such inhabitants take to borrowing their everyday appearance to those holidays. It helps that for the most part given the closed-off corners they live in they are the stereotypical characters of their holiday. An interesting approach to say the least.
In all this, we have Jack Skellington who by now has become bored with his existence and his place in Halloween town. He decides to do something new but this backfires badly. In comes Sally, an individual, that has kept an eye on him for quite some time. She understands this emptiness that has been growing inside him and continually tries to help him.
While the story is phenomenal, another thing is the animation and music. Yes. For most accounts, while I first saw this I hadn't noticed it was some type of spooky musical it became noticeable with a scene called Jack's Lament by Danny Elfman. It's terribly enchanting and it is in that moment I noticed, hey, this is an an animated musical movie to an extent.
It's pretty ingenious and an excellent Halloween movie topped by an excellent voice acting cast. Definitely check it out!
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