Now let's not loose our heads... this was an awesome movie!

Rating: 10/10 (28 July 2002)

Tim Burton, as always you know my rant on the love I have for this director, when given a dark subject, he always does a great job with it. Everyone knows the story of the famous headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, every Halloween, we are guaranteed to at least see the cartoon or hear the story. So one of the best known ghost stories of all time stars Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, the famous scientist who is a non-believer until he finally faces the scary figure. Johnny was definitely a great choice as Ichabod, he brought the perfect amount of strangeness, intelligence and then you have to love that he adds Ichabod being a bit of a coward, which to be honest was very human. Then Tim just had to add the nightmarish feature of having Christopher Walken as the ghost of the headless horseman, that wasn't a pretty image.
In 1799, New York City police constable Ichabod Crane is dispatched by his superiors to the Hudson Highlands hamlet of Sleepy Hollow, to investigate a series of brutal slayings in which the victims have been found beheaded. A frequent user of new, though so far unproven investigative techniques such as finger-printing and autopsies, Crane arrives in Sleepy Hollow armed with his bag of scientific tools only to be informed by the town's elders that the murderer is not of flesh and blood, rather a headless supernatural warrior from beyond the grave who rides at night on a massive black steed. Crane does not believe them and begins his own investigation, until he comes face to "face" with the Headless Horseman. Boarding a room at the home of the town's richest family, the Van Tassels, Crane develops an attraction to their daughter, Katrina, even as he's plagued by nightmares of his mother's horrific torture when he was a child. Delving further into the mystery with the aid of the orphaned Young Masbeth, whose father was a victim of the Horseman, Crane discovers within the Western Woods both the Horseman's entry point between this world and the beyond, the gnarled Tree of the Dead, and his grave. He finds the Horseman's skull is missing though the murders continue until Crane uncovers a murky plot revolving around revenge and land rights with the Horseman controlled by Katrina's stepmother, Lady Van Tassel, who sends the killer after her.
Sleepy Hollow is sure to be a classic down the line, I loved that it's rated R, because honestly I know this is supposed to be a child's ghost story, but if it was made that way with Tim Burton as director, it would have taken away the good scares that Sleepy Hollow provides. This is a pretty bloody movie and does have some really good scares, so I'm warning you ahead of time. But there are terrific actors, great sets and this will be a fun movie to watch every Halloween. Tim Burton gives us another dark classic that teaches us how to get "aHEAD" in life! Lol, you never saw that coming, did you? Yeah, just watch the movie, it's a lot of fun.
10/10