I didn't lose my head over it

Rating: Null/10 (27 November 1999)

I should preface my comments by saying that "Sleepy Hollow" does have a tremendous amount going for it. Tim Burton is nothing if not a master of atmospherics, and he gives his all here, creating a musty, foreboding upstate New York town that seems like a repository of age-old grudges and diabolical portents from the dawn of time. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's camera captures this world with dark, burnished elegance, and the sets and costumes suck us into this simultaneously unreal and convincing world.
Johnny Depp is also entertaining as the fastidious and pragmatic Ichabod Crane, who is slowly brought around to realizations of haunted doings in Sleepy Hollow. Overall, the performances are competent, and the Headless Horseman scenes are nicely handled. The Horseman himself is a stunning image, and Ray Park (Darth Maul of "Phantom Menace" fame) fills the suit with energy and great agility.
Still, "Sleepy Hollow" does disappoint in a lot of respects. Christina Ricci has little presence, and thus her romance with Crane seems perfunctory and rather pointless. Crane's haunting visions of his murdered mother would play more effectively if seen on a more realistic level. The movie has too many characters to know what to do with, and the plot is busy but not completely involving. As I mentioned, the Horseman scenes are effective, but do not seem to flow organically from the material, but are rather scattered throughout, to the point where they start to feel like money shots from a porno film: "Aah, there's the Horseman! NOW we'll see what we came for!"
A mixed bag, but I would ultimately recommend the film, primarily for its visual flair and for some good, creepy atmosphere that is able to generally sustain the plot and character problems. It's not Burton's best, but it has its moments.