Striking visuals...little else

Rating: 6/10 (24 November 1999)

OK, the film LOOKS fantastic. The scenes are almost always in darkness, there's plenty of fog and some breathtaking shots of the Headless Horseman going after his victims. Other than that, the movie is hopeless. The plot is, to put it mildly, confusing; the cast is surprisingly bad (even Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci!); and the film gets very unpleasant after a while (we are almost constantly seeing somebody's head lopped off). SPOILERS AHEAD!!! The plot is the main problem--none of the characters are clearly defined, Depp is real annoying, every single female character is a witch and it's very hard to follow (looks like there were huge chunks of dialogue edited out). They do pull it all together at the end, but there are still many unexplained characters and motivations (the witch in the cave for example). EVERYONE is bad--I never thought I'd say that about Depp and Ricci, but it's true. Also the scenes of people's heads getting lopped off gets very boring after the 8th time. Visually it's incredible though, and some of the scenes are really creepy. So if you're into visuals, you'll probably like the movie. If you want plot, character or depth--stay away.