Visual But Very Gory Delight

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2005)

"Sleepy Hollow" was a visual delight--though I had to frequently turn away from the gory and very frequent decapitations and other bloody detail (which the teen boys in the audience thought were "awesome") making it hard to keep eating my popcorn.
I thought it odd that in a Dutch colonial town everyone spoke with a Brit accent (I guess Christina Ricci being younger was more Americanized), but I enjoyed seeing so many Masterpiece Theater grads, as it was shot on a London sound stage.
Director Tim Burton switches from serious to camp and back, but the knowing script references defuse the gore, with a lot of tips-of-the-hat to "The X Files," and Johnny Depp's coward-alternating-with-hero is refreshing, borrowing a lot more from Edgar Allen Poe, the inventor of the detective novel, than Washington Irving.
I think this could give young kids nightmares.
(originally written 11/21/1999)