The Nightmare Before Christmas

Animation, Family, Fantasy Rated: PG 76 min
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Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloween Town, is bored with doing the same thing every year for Halloween. One day he stumbles into Christmas Town, and is so taken with 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. Turns out, it isn’t exactly his thing. Another Tim Burton-penned Halloween classic in stop-motion, like all those beloved Christmas classics from the 1960s, directed by Henry Selick (Coraline).

“Part avant-garde art film, part amusing but morbid fairy tale, it is a delightfully ghoulish holiday musical that displays more inventiveness in its brief 75 minutes than some studios can manage in an entire year.” — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“This full-length animated movie was shot in stop motion, with all the febrile, twittery fascination that the medium exerts; it has a magic-toy shop feeling, with unexpected objects stuttering into life.” — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
directed by
Henry Selick
written by
Tim Burton, Michael McDowell, Caroline Thompson
with
Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara
country
United States