The arresting, nightmarish visuals and sight gags pay off. It’s just the scanty supply of them that keep a clever idea or three and a novel setting from ever jelling into a movie destined to become an evergreen, a seasonal classic.

Roger Moore

Movie Nation

Beneath it all is the story of a child’s love and guilt — and an education and judicial system letting her down — which propels her to bring her parents back from the dead, but that gets a little lost in the gross-out humor, Addams Family-level weirdness and shock-for-shock’s sake visual gags like a demonic teddy bear. For all the lovingly crafted spectacle, Selick’s agonizing, shot-by-shot film, is as overstuffed as that bear.