Voloptuous and spooky.

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2006)

To tell the truth, I was a little confused by the plot. Yes, it's true. The story that used to be on every high school reading list lost me here and there. I can't remember the original, but did it really include so much detail about family trees and inheritances and local conspiracies to hide forbidden truths? It's hard to believe that it did.
It probably doesn't matter that the story is confusing at times because the cinematography and set design are are so resplendently dismal as to be spooky in themselves. And if the constant twilight, the desaturated colors, the late Fall atmosphere, the general gloom of both the interiors and exteriors don't creep you out, there's always the Headless Hessian Horseman with his flailing blades. (He twirls them around in his hands like a gunfighter's six-shooters and they have this swishing sound.) The acting is pretty good too. Johnny Depp seems a little stiff at time but maybe the part calls for it. Christina Ricci looks almost edible with her wide forehead, enormous doll-like eyes, and diminutive splanchnocranium. The supporting players are all just fine, including Christopher Lee, with the exception of the kid who serves as Crane's sidekick. He sounds as if he's still practicing his lines.
The story has a couple of false starts. Depp is first set up as a kind of visionary Sherlock Holmes type. He has invented new tools for investigating crime scenes. But none of them is explained and he is seen using them only once, for a purpose we can't define. We expect him, based on this early exposition, which leads to his exile from New York City to Sleepy Hollow, to be a scientific genius. But that's soon gotten out of the way. It isn't long before he meets the Horseman himself and realizes he's dealing with the supernatural.
At that point, alas, the movie begins to lean more heavily on the clichÃ©s of the slasher movie. People do stupid things that put them in danger, for instance. Having just run away from the Horseman and knowing they are still being stalked by him, two guys stop running, turn around, and stare into the fog to see if their pursuer will show up. (Huh?) The constituents of the slasher movie are always there, lurking in the mist, ready to attack at any moment, like the Headless Horseman (and I DO mean "headless"). The very first murder, in the opening few minutes, has a guy in a cornfield get his head lopped off and we see the blood splatter across the face of a Jack o' Lantern. Almost all the heads are chopped off graphically on the screen although there isn't that much blood, thanks. I suppose that kids, who ought to enjoy this movie, were part of the intended audience so the gore was contained.
As for the Horseman himself -- well, I don't think I like him too much. He's presented as an immortal action figure. He's always in motion, galloping a horse at full speed, striding quickly around. He's dressed in a black cloak over black armor, which is alright, but I think he might have been spookier if he'd been less energetic and more of a plodding, implacable menace. The staging of his attacks are low-brow. There are sword fights out of any number of action movies, with two antagonists, flashing blades, twirling figures, swishing and clanking sounds -- all to no purpose since it's already known that the Horseman can't be beaten. At least they didn't throw in any flying kicks from the Chop Sockey movies.
But the figure himself is really terrifying, especially when we don't have a clear view of him. The parts I enjoyed most were simply those in which frightened people were whispering in the shadows. The look and the feel of the late 18th-century Hudson Valley are admirably conveyed, though even that is a little too heavily laid on. Can't remember a single scene that takes place in broad daylight. It's as if the sun didn't exist in Sleepy Hollow.