like Coppola's 'Dracula', you're cheering for both sides, good and evil

Rating: 8/10 (1 December 1999)

Not since Coppola's presentation of Brahm Stoker's Dracula has horror been delivered so ingeniously. This film reeks of Burton's dark, gothic, anti-pastel-colors style of scenery. Death looms everywhere in scenery with fog, autumn leaves, cemetaries, dead-dry trees and we are supposed to believe that a supernatural entity, the horseman, is able to roam the earth amidst a industrial-dawning society. The industrial-age elements consisting of the smoke stacks in New York, the windmill, Ichabod's satchel and his forensics, etc... The horror is delivered in majestic, triumphant grandeure and not cheezy, grab-atcha gore. The grey setting acts as a perfect contrasting canvas, or an amplifier for the bloody scenes which would never make us cringe so nearly as much if we were watching Friday the 13th part Y2K.