About the author : Tim Burton was born in 1958. He is a really famous american film director, artist and writer. He's known for doing creepy and dark films, indeed he has a really gothic, macabre and unique universe. He has directed movies you surely know, such as Edward Scissorhands in 1990, Corpse bride and Charlie and the chocolate factory both in 2005, Dark Shadows and Frenkenweenie, more recently, in 2012. We can see the same actors in almost every film he has done; Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, who, by the way, is married to Tim Burton.

                                                                                

Concerning the film : it has been released in 1993, and it's a stop motion musical fantasy film. Jack Skellington, who lives in Halloween Town, starts to get bored preparing Halloween's party every single year. One day, he goes into the wood and finds a door which leads him to another Town, the Chistmas' one. Fascinated by the lights and presents, Jack, when he comes back into his own town, decides to share what he just saw, and that this particular year, they wouldn't be celebrating Halloween; they would celebrate Christmas. So, he kidnaps Santa, wears his red costume and acts like him. Unfortunately, Jack doesn't know enough about Christmas, and that's why the party starts to get really creepy, morbid and scary looking. The presents are no longer toys, but scary boxes, and violent teddy bears.
This movie is obviously gothic because of its atmosphere.
First of all, Jack is a skeletton, which is not that common for a film. But since this is Tim Burton and his gothic ideas, we manage to understand. Jack is really tall, his arms and legs seems infinite, he's also really thin. He wears a black and white tuxedo. He can have cute face expressions, when he's happy, or really mean ones, and become scary whenever he's mad. The fact that Jack is a skeletton and that he can be spooky proves that this film belongs to the gothic genre.  Anyway, wether it's Sally and her ruler, Zero the ghost dog, the kids, or the mayor of it, Halloween town is composed of lots of creepy characters. They're all completely imaginary and scary.

                                                          

Halloween Town is a really dark place, the streets are full of castles and cemetaries. There is, of course, no sun in the sky, it's often storming and we don't see that much daytimes, but more night times, with a huge moon surrounded by clouds. That is what makes the atmosphere even more ghoulish and not reassuring at all.

                                                       
Also when Jack visits Christmas Town, he's himself surprised, because everybody is happy and laughing and he says that all of this is all new for him. He keeps repeating "what's this?" because his home town is so lugubrious he gets amazed by everything he sees. So except the small amount of joy and lights in the Christmas part, the movie is creepy, and so spooky.

To conclude I would say that despite the fact that there can be some hints of joy and colors, in general this film is a gothic one, and it has a ghoulish and macabre atmosphere, with great characters, as creepy as possible.
The imaginary notion is important because Jack travels through several worlds, which is kind of impossible, and all of the characters and Jack himself are also really surprising because we've never seen characters like these in any other movie, except for Tim Burton's ones of course.