Genuinely creepy, but not really Burton's forte

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2000)

The ever-so-slightly odd director Tim Burton and his favourite actor, the similarly bizarre Johnny Depp, returned to the silver screen in this retelling of Washington Irving's literary classic.
Depp plays Constable Ichabod Crane, a methodical detective from New York. He is sent to the backwater of Sleepy Hollow in upstate N.Y. in the year 1799, in order to investigate a series of decapitations. When the culprit turns out to be the headless ghost of an evil mercenary (Christopher Walken with head, Ray Darth Maul' Park without) Crane is forced to re-evaluate his scientific principles. His detective skills are still relevant as a pattern to the supernatural murders emerges with a conspiracy not far behind. In the meantime, Crane falls for local beauty Kristina (Christina Ricci), daughter of the wealthy Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon).
Johnny Depp turns in a predictably idiosyncratic performance as the squeamish Crane, giving him an infectious enthusiasm and a silly accent. The rest of the cast camp it up, as you would expect  it is hardly stretching for the likes of Ian McDiarmid or Miranda Richardson. Christina Ricci has a strange, elfin quality that Burton obviously admires, but she seems out of place  too old to be playing Wednesday Addams again, perhaps.
As you might expect from a Tim Burton film, style abounds. Burton invests the town of Sleepy Hollow with a low-key gothic look that adds immeasurably to the creepy appeal of the film. For this is not really a horror film, despite the obvious Hammer influences (Christopher Lee has a cameo as Crane's superior). The gory beheadings and action sequences feel out of place with the tone of the rest of the film, especially Crane's dreams. Rather, this is an eerie mystery with more than a touch of compassion and humour in which the subject matter of the plot does not fit particularly well. Well worth seeing, this nonetheless feels as though the director and the story are wrong for each other.