This is how the tale should be told and made.

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 2001)

A good old-fashioned and gothic-like thriller that provides some "real" nail-biting moments that's based on the novel by Washington Irving. The tale follows Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp), a moody constable who is sent up to the small community of "Sleepy Hollow" in upstate New York to investigate a series of strange and grisly murders. When Crane arrives, he doesn't get a lot of cooperation from the locals even though they tell him that a "headless horseman" committed the vicious murders. Plus, Crane is told that the horseman was a former Hessian mercenary, played by "a very scary" looking Christopher Walken. The performances (Depp, Walken, Christina Ricci, etc.) are great and so is the musical score by Danny Elfman and Emmanuel Lubezli's photography of the gloomy scenery. I like the fact that director Tim Burton ("Batman") doesn't let his screenwriters (Andrew Kevin Walker and make-up whiz Kevin Yagher) follow the same story as several other adaptions have done before this one. Martin Landau appears unbilled. "Sleepy Hollow" shows that this is how the tale should be made and told.