The Nightmare Before Christmas

Released:  November 13^th, 1993

Rated:  PG

Distributor:  Buena Vista International

Starring:  Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey

Directed by:  Henry Selick

Written by:  Tim Burton, Michael McDowell, Caroline Thompson

Personal Bias Alert:  doesn’t like stop-motion animation, lukewarm on Tim Burton

4 of 10

            The Nightmare Before Christmas should be one of my classics.  I was the perfect age when it came out, was drawn to dark kids fare, and was already steeped in Burton’s style.  But Nightmare slipped through the cracks to become one of those films I always knew of but never saw.  Now over twenty years later, the film seems to have lost its magic.  Perhaps replication has made it seem less original, perhaps I’m just too old, or perhaps (just perhaps) it has always been too lightweight to hold up its own reputation.

            In a world where each holiday has its own isolated town, Halloween’s frightful leader Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman) finds himself tired of celebrating the same holiday every year.  While wandering the woods in misery, he comes across Christmas Town and is enchanted by its bright cheer.  Jack brings tidings of Christmas back to Halloween Town and endeavors to lead his newfound holiday the following year, but when his fear-loving townsfolk struggle to grasp the concept, Jack must somehow morph ghoulish ghosts into spry elves.

            It’s a silly plot, but to be fair, it is intended for very young children.  In this case, silly is fine, but lightweight is not.  So little happens in Nightmare that its brief runtime feels stretched tight.  It plays out with the intentional clunkiness of a TV special and lacks drive or stakes.  It falls prey to the idea that little kids can’t handle narrative menace, and it’s a much lesser and slightly patronizing film for it.  Consider Disney’s landmark Beauty and the Beast, released just two years before Nightmare.  This film presents kids with the prospect of being separated from your parents, bullied by a monster, and loosing forever the people that you love.  Nightmare has a potentially messed up Christmas and a bored protagonist.  See the difference?  How are children, let alone the adults being drug along with them, supposed to get invested in this story?

            As is often the answer with Tim Burton products, it’s the off-kilter, gothic style that’s supposed to reel you in.  The beauty of the film can’t be denied, even when you’re looking at worm-ridden monsters.  Burton and company designed a few truly memorable creatures here, from the lanky Jack to his pincushion admirer, which are all just the right amount of creepy.  Surrounding them are elaborate, misshapen buildings that you can imagine creaking and swaying in the wind.  Halloween Town is so perfectly themed that it’s a shock when things briefly switch to Christmas Town, with its popping colors and twinkling light.  It shows that the production team was capable of so much variety, which makes Halloween Town’s rigidly Tim Burton style a bit disappointing.  The entire look is replicated in past and future projects, the awe of which is diminished by so much repetition.  It’s still beautiful, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not enough to support an entire film.

            Filling out the scant plot is a bunch of supposedly peppy musical numbers composed by longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.  While the songs have their moments, they’re filled with repetitive and semi-lazy lyrics.   Sentiments are reworded ad nauseam, and it’s not uncommon to hear nonsense phrases just because they rhyme.  The accompanying music is often pretty bare-bones, so if you’re not into the zany words, then the numbers will do little to brew your excitement.  Couple that with a ridiculously undercooked romance, and the film offers little else besides surface entertainment.

            Burton had Nightmare cooking in his brain for nearly ten years before the film went into production.  It seems to have been a passion project for the man, and perhaps because of that there’s little effort to make it appeal to a wider audience.  You’ll either be charmed by his style or you won’t, because there’s little other reason to watch this film.

Other Notes:

Ø  I’ve long been slightly creeped out by stop-motion animation.  Everything appears lifeless to me, and I have great difficulty connecting to any story told with this method.

Ø  Note that this film is Tim Burton’s baby, but he did not direct it.  He was too busy at the time with Batman Returns and Ed Wood.

Ø  The scientific method joke made me laugh out loud.  Poor Jack, it never sways public opinion.

Krampus

Released:  December 4^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

Starring:  Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrel, Emjay Anthony

Directed by:  Michael Dougherty

Written by:  Todd Casey, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields

Personal Bias Alert:  was lukewarm on Dougherty’s Trick r’ Treat, likes genre blending

7.3 of 10

            Christmas horror movies have been made before, but they’re generally intended for B-movie or hard genre fanatics.  Ask the average moviegoer to name a few and you’ll likely get:  “Gremlins!  And, uh…”  The conversation won’t last long, because gleeful gore and Christmas tidings just don’t seem to go together.  It’s a balance that Krampus struggles to get right, but the effort, and Universal’s confident marketing push, is a risk to be admired.

            Director/co-writer Michael Dougherty is mining a very similar well here as his previous film, Trick r’ Treat.  Both are about an impish creature punishing those who don’t take the holidays seriously.  Perhaps they’re part of a loose series, or perhaps Dougherty just wants us to keep our holidays more reverent.  Christmas, it turns out, already had a creepy monster in its lore, which should come as no surprise considering how old and mixed its traditions are.   The character of Krampus is described in a nifty story within a story as “the shadow of Santa”, bringing carnage to those who lose the holiday spirit.  He’s inadvertently summoned by the central family’s youngest son, Max (Emjay Anthony), after becoming disillusioned by his family’s bickering.  Holiday-themed horror ensues, but not without a lot of winks at the audience, because the whole thing is knowingly a bit ridiculous.

            How much leeway that gives the film is going to vary for everyone, and its charm relies on having lots of room to slip up.  The film is, in many ways, a mess.  Its characters are obnoxious stereotypes, its sentimentality seems tacked on, and it settles for scares instead of terror.  There’s also a nasty anti-middle America streak that’s hard to get over (I know lots of nice people who like hot dogs and mac n’ cheese), and yet it overcomes all of this because it’s so darn gleeful.  The love that seeps through this film for oddball horror and kitschy bad guys is effervescent, and the tone weirdly fits with Christmas’s garish traditions.  It’s genuinely fun to watch this family get terrorized, and even though you don’t want to see them die, you do want to see what craziness gets thrown at them next.

            Between this and the anthology-based Trick r’ Treat, Dougherty proves to have a varied and imaginative take on his monsters.  Both films send all sorts of creepy-crawlies after their victims, and while they’re based on horror staples like clowns, children, and ancient demons, there’s always a twist to take things up a notch.  Either due to budget constraints or personal taste, Dougherty relies mostly on practical effects, working with Weta Workshop to create some very memorable monsters that any Planet Hollywood should proudly display.  Krampus himself is introduced in a rather memorable scene, and even if he never proves to be as terrifying as his introduction implies, he’s still a noteworthy baddie in the annals of PG-13 horror.

            Krampus, for all its odd mixing, never does anything truly original.  It holds very tight to clichés, but the gleeful way it goes about its story will earn it many laughs and cheers.  The ending is a letdown, that’s all I’ll say, but it’s a big one considering how assured it had been up until that point.  Still, there are so many worth-while moments that its flaws become overwhelmed, leaving audiences with an appetite for more holiday carnage should Dougherty choose to continue his series.

Other Notes:

Ø  It’s not lost on me how difficult it must’ve been for the entire cast to hit the same note tone-wise.  Kudos all around.

Ø  Without spoiling it, there’s a plot point early on that I was terrified that they would renege on.  Thankfully, they don’t.

Ø  The score in this film is inventive and near-perfect.

Ø  And so the legend of ‘the noodle incident’ is expanded.

Happy Christmas

Released:  July 25^th, 2014

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Magnolia Pictures

Starring:  Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg, Mark Webber

Directed by:  Joe Swanberg

Written by:  Joe Swanberg

Personal Bias Alert:  hit-and-miss on mumblecore, likes Anna Kendrick

7 of 10

            Mumblecore is quietly becoming one of the biggest filmmaking movements in America, but its founders reject that there’s any organization involved.  Instead, they surmise that the characteristic low-budget, organic feel is a natural response to mainstream cinema’s swelling budgets and rote stories.  Many of the founders are already making forays into bigger pictures, with Lynn Shelton, Mark Duplass, and Joe Swanberg attracting a variety of mainstream actors to their projects.  Despite this shift, Swanberg has chosen to keep his budgets low and with Happy Christmas reverts back to a micro-budget style (the film was made for a reported $70,000) after maxing out at $1 million for Drinking Buddies.  How this is possible with a cast that includes Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham, and Melanie Lynskey is a mystery, but it’s one that you won’t bother to consider when watching the thoroughly enjoyable Happy Christmas.

            As a hallmark of the subgenre, the film is largely improvised, leaving the plot to be a loose, shaggy thing that doesn’t go anywhere drastic.  There’s a 30ish couple (Swanberg and Lynskey) with a young baby and a couch-surfing little sister (Kendrick) in need of a restart.  There’s hints early on of animosity that never quite blossoms.  Instead, the film circles around a story of familial love and responsibility that is worth the pain.  It’s a gentle conflict, but one that most people will recognize.  It’s refreshing, given the histrionics that come with most films about families, to find one that captures the calmness of day-to-day operations.  There’s annoyance and frustration, yes, but there’s also an affectionate history and a bond that runs too deep to break.

            Another easy cliché that the film manages to avoid is pigeonholing Kendrick’s Jenny as a good-for-nothing slacker.  She’s troubled and there’s hints that she’s rebounding from a bad relationship, but she’s also genuinely interested in her brother and sister-in-law’s life, not wanting to interrupt it for too long.  Kendrick plays her as someone smart enough to know that she’s intruding, and her attempts to make herself useful is what staves off animosity.  These efforts lead to a sweet relationship between Kendrick and Lynskey, one that feels genuine and is wonderfully navigated by the two actresses.  They make it feel as if they wander into the understatedly powerful moments that occur between these two characters, and given the genre, perhaps that’s what actually happened.

            However, the style sometimes gets in the way, as almost all of the moments when Happy Christmas stumbles can be traced back to its mumblecore tenets.  The aesthetic simply isn’t for everyone, and the low-fi camerawork, lighting, and sound design doesn’t make for an elegant film.  More coverage shots would give the film some energy, and the lackadaisical plot inevitably leads to some inconsequential scenes.  There’s a sense that Swanberg wasn’t out to make a perfect film but to capture some small moments that aren’t often observed.  This is something he does quite well, but it doesn’t make for a complete film.

            Despite its shortcomings, Happy Christmas is carried across the finish line on the backs of Kendrick and Lynskey.  Everything about the film quickly fades from your mind except a few raw and wholly recognizable moments between these two.  If that is truly all that Swanberg wanted to capture, then the mission was accomplished.

Other Notes

Ø  Here’s hoping that Lynskey gets more starring roles.

Ø  I’ve never taken to Lena Dunham, even here.

Ø  Fun fact:  the baby is played by Swanberg’s real-life daughter.