The Biggest Mystery About Sleepy Hollow

Rating: 4/10 (14 December 1999)

Warning: Spoiler follows.
Why was Brom Van Brunt (Casper Van Dien) in this story? Obviously, he is the antagonist in Washington Irving's story, but what plot function did this character serve in this film? He says maybe a total of five words before he is unnecessarily killed off. He does not even serve as a red herring, because no one could believe that he is the supernatural murderer.
My guess (though I am not totally sure) is that Tim Burton liked the image of the headless horseman hurling the jack-o- lantern at Ichabod Crane. That was a nice dream sequence, but it was completely unnecessary to this film.
However, since the film seemed not to know what it wanted to be, an alternate explanation is that this started out much closer to Irving's story, but got transformed along the way.