Incredible visuals, shame about the acting and script

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 1999)

Tim Burton is incapable of making a boring film. There is always something on screen to enthrall the eye, regardless of the quality of the script. Sleepy Hollow has one magnificent image after another and it is worth paying your 7 or 8 bucks just to enjoy the never-ending stream of misty landscapes, haunted woods, candlelit interiors and New York cityscapes from 200 years ago. Plainly the wonderful crew, from cinematographer to costume designer to art director to special effects, had a whale of a time and delivered every ounce of talent of which they are capable.

I was salivating over the opening credits as so many of my favourite actors' names rolled across the screen. Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Jeffrey Jones, Miranda Richardson - I had seen them all create numerous unforgettable characters in very different films. So what went wrong here? There were so many scenes which ought to have been scary and yet the actors somehow did not look particularly scared, even when in mortal danger. Perhaps it was the oddly inconsistent treatment of the horrible headless horseman, who was apparently immortal and indestructible - he survives a Terminator-type conflagration unscathed, yet he can be temporarily knocked down by bullets and fought off in a traditional style sword fight. He is apparently tangible but his original mortal skeleton is lying in the grave and he can materialise out of a twisted tree.
The lack of an internally consistent magical or fantastical environment is deadly for this type of story. Even if the audience does not consciously reason out the logical gaps, they can sense something in the story is incoherent. "The Matrix" was stuffed with end-to-end idiocies and contradictions, but it bombarded the audience with continuous rapid-fire stunning effects and science-fiction scenes which distracted attention from the imbecilities. The lovingly recreated 18th century setting of Sleepy Hollow is too concrete and the action not fast enough to provide similar distraction.
Also the plot bears hardly any relation to the original short story. It is 30 years since I read the original, but Ichabod was then the local schoolteacher - in the film he is a constable sent up from New York to this rural backwater. As I recall, the Headless Horseman was a flesh-and-blood prankster scaring Ichabod away from the lady they both loved - Ichabod hilariously became the victim of his own superstitious belief in ghosts and demons. In the film he is presented as the modern, rational, scientific investigator of murders and he initially dismisses the locals' beliefs in demons. In the film, the Headless Horseman is a real demon crassly manipulated as a useful hitman by a local vengeful witch.

Thus the delightful short story has been utterly coarsened and made oddly less compelling - we are so blase about special effects,synthetic blood and gore etc that this effects-heavy spectacle is much less scary and fascinating than more subtle masterpieces such as "The Haunting" (1963 version) or "Night of the Demon". A pity, but see it for the marvellous images alone.