One of the most important queries of all of our lives is whether The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween movie or Christmas movie. Forget about chicken vs eggs, this is the real conundrum -- philosophers have devoted their lives to the eternal question. For our part, we think its a Christmas movie. Just a delightfully ghoulish and legitimately scary one. Although most of the people in the film are traditional figures of Halloween lore, the main character is Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, and he's trying to figure out the true meaning of Christmas. Unfortunately, he's coming at it from a pretty disturbed perspective. The end result is a bunch of creatures whose entire existence has been dedicated to scaring people suddenly trying to embrace holiday cheer. The image of monsters creating their own version of Christmas presents is genius -- the demented things that they design are the sort of toys that Tim Burton probably would have included in his letter to Santa Claus when he was a child. Anyway, as much fun as Christmas is, we can all agree that Halloween has a much cooler vibe, so the decision to combine the two is a stroke of brilliance.
Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.
