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Wonderfully weird and wickedly twisted Tim Burton's fiendish imagination has been given full rein in this jaw-dropping, stop-motion animated musical fantasy. The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fable of phantasmagorical dimensions involving the gross and ghoulish inhabitants of Halloweentown. Fresh out of new ideas to scare people (the chief industry of the city), Jack Skellington - visionary, if spindly, civic leader - is having a creative crisis. He stumbles across the secret portal to Christmastown, with its alarmingly cheerful citizens, and hits on a grand scheme that is so cunning if you put a tail on it you could call it a weasel! He will hijack this holly folly holiday, become the overlord of Yuletide terror and bring joyful fright to tiny tots all over the world. A magnificent if misplaced sense of Santadom that could spell the end of childhood as we know it.
The film's dazzling techniques - a visual concert of fabulous model figures, intricate set constructions and a plethora of animated effects - harness the talents of more than 120 animators, artists and technicians. Backgrounds have the look of surreal nineteenth century etchings and the characters that traverse them seem to have sprung from a Bosch painting. What this tends to disguise at times is that this particular Nightmare is also a top-flight musical, with knockout songs written, produced (and largely) sung by Danny Elfman. Those familiar with Burton's Gothic pop classics, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Batman et al will recognise the darker side of this peculiar universe where almost every fairytale convention is stood on its head. If not - watch out, the Oogie Boogie man could get you.