Fun pastiche of Hammer horror, Poe, Irving and others

Rating: 8/10 (25 July 2009)

I used to love Tim Burton. Being a sf/fantasy/comics freak from childhood on, Burton was one of the few Hollywood filmmakers separate from the Lucas/Spielberg axis who was making stuff that I could always count on seeing with my non-film buff friends who were into the same sort of genre stuff I was. Loved "Edward Scissorhands", "Beetlejuice", and "Ed Wood", and always looked forward to what came next.
But in the past decade or so he's disappointed more often than not. His "Planet of the Apes" remake was an abortion, and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", while not terrible, didn't seem necessary or particularly necessary either. "Sweeney Todd" was a little bit better, but still didn't make me particular worry about having missed a couple of his more recent works. I caught up to one of those the other night though, and I'm happy to say that my fears were not (mostly) justified.
"Sleepy Hollow", first of all, has very little to do with the Washington Irving story which it is "based on" according to the credits. "Inspired by" might be more accurate, and the film takes equal inspiration from the works of Edgar Allan Poe (specifically his prototypical detective character, Dupin) and Hammer horror films from the late 50s and early 60s - going so far as to cast Christopher Lee in a small role at the beginning of the film.
The cast is certainly a big, big part of the fun here, with such wonderful character veterans as Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson, Ian McDiarmid, Michael Gough, Martin Landau and Christopher Walken all getting juicy (if generally small) turns in this story of a New York police constable, Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp), with "advanced" ideas being sent (more or less as punishment) to the small Hudson valley town of Sleepy Hollow to deal with a series of gruesome beheadings, in 1799. As the film develops, Ichabod believes there's a perfectly rational explanation for the murders, and it's to the film's credit and Depp's that as he gradually learns that in fact there is a fantastic, mystical presence behind them (Christopher Walken as the silent but deadly Headless Horseman), he continues to probe the secrets, never entirely giving up his rational belief system but also finding the ability to accept some of the religious/magical possibilities behind the horseman - while also coming under the spell of a young woman at the center of the horror (Christina Ricci).
It's all quite beautifully shot, excellently acted with perhaps the exception of Ricci (one of those actors I can never really accept in period roles), who isn't really bad, and it's a wonderful mixture of comedy, scares and thrills, and a bit of the mystic. My only real problem with it comes in the ending, which is too much like a Scooby Doo "aha, I've got you now" episode; most of the film managed to keep me guessing at least a little bit but the finale is all too typical. Oh well; this is certainly one of the most pleasant surprises I've had in a while, and there's even some interesting stuff below the surface - the whole colonial/witch-haunted/Protestant New England of the 17th-18th centuries brushing up against the coming of modern science and the Industrial Revolution and secularism is quite expertly handled, though it never gets in the way of a good old-fashioned story. Really, loads and loads of fun and probably my 2nd-favorite Burton film at the moment after "Ed Wood".