How Halloween twists the beauty of Christmas

Rating: 9/10 (17 October 2013)

Even though this film was not directed by Tim Burton, I guess one should give him the credit for it as he helped write and also produced it. I guess the reason that he did not direct it was because it was an animated feature and he wanted to use a director that was far more skilled at animation than he was. In any case, this film still has a very Burton look to it with the twisted and dark scenery and the tragic characters. Even so, this movie is actually directed at children, and seems to be designed to introduce them to the world of the tragedy.
The movie is about Jack Skelington, the Lord of Halloween Town. After a rather successful Halloween, he is depressed because he has lost all direction in life. All his life seems to be is haunting and scaring people at one time of the year, and even though the entire population of Halloween town looks up to him, he really does not want to do it anymore. In fact, he wants a career change.
He thus goes on a walk out of Halloween town and finds a small grove of trees with doors in it. He enters the door shaped like a Christmas tree and finds himself in Christmas town. Upon seeing the wonders of this town, he decides that he wants to take over Christmas, so he has Santa kidnapped, and sets all of Halloween town to work to create his own Christmas. The problem is that Halloween town is not experienced and what they end up creating is a twisted and disturbing version of Christmas. This is the tragedy of this movie, Skelington seriously wishes to do something new, but ends up destroying the joy that the holiday was supposed to thing.
I guess there is little in the way of themes in this movie with the exception of stick at what you are good at. But the movie is tragic in this sense because Jack Skelington has ended up doing what he has done because he has become bored and wishes to escape, but cannot. Even though the ending is happy, and Skelington gets the girl, there is still the underlying pain that Skelington is really back where he started, as when he tried to take over Christmas, he failed badly.
This is a brilliant movie: the visuals and the music are superb. In fact, the music is by Danny Elfman, one of Burton's companions that seems to do the music for all of his films. It is a shame though that much of the population do not see the beauty behind Burton's films.