Another fairly decent offering from Burton & Depp

Rating: 6/10 (10 January 2018)

Detective Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent from New York to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders and bring the culprit back to New York to face justice. Using advanced forensic techniques, Crane believes that the task that he has been given shouldn't prove too difficult, but his world is soon turned upside down when he learns that the man that he's pursuing is not quite of this world...
Sleepy Hollow is another dark and somewhat macabre offering from Tim Burton and Johnny Depp (whom have both collaborated many times together over the years). I've never read Washington Irving's novel (upon which this film was based), but was interested in this film when I read the plot summary. If I'm honest I didn't find the film to be consistently thrilling, but in fairness the basic story was fairly good and had enough about it to keep me involved (particularly in respect of the Horseman and how and why he selects his victims). Due to the very fact that everyone was a bit wacky I was never quite sure who to suspect and I found it entertaining trying to piece everything together.
The screenplay is pretty good, but Director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp are both on top form as well; having worked together on a number of occasions you do get the feeling that both men understand each other fairly well. Although the film has a dark plot and overall dark feel about it, the film does still have some amusing moments and a few gentle winks from time to time which made the film slightly more enjoyable overall.
Depp gives a very impassioned performance here and does make the film a lot of fun to watch. It was interesting watching him getting swept up into the mad world of the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow. The supporting cast all do fine with what they have to work with, but this is definitely Depp's film and he carries it well.
Whilst overall the film has more hits than misses I didn't find it to be entirely successful; it does have its slow stretches (particularly in the first half of the film) and character development is quite poor, but I suppose part of Burton's problem is that he does sometimes get more swept up in the style of his products at the expense of substance. It's also fair to say that the film also suffers slightly when the headless horseman isn't around.
FINAL VERDICT; Worthy of your time, but with the odd miss here and there.