do not show to children!

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2003)

This movie will be very disturbing to children: it not only shows about a dozen closeups of beheadings, but often makes the victim a parent who dies right in front of their kid. Paradoxically, the film may not be very scary for grownups, as each bloody shot is held just a little too long, enough to put it in the realm of silliness, and Burton seems to have forgotten anything he might previously have known about suspense or the power of suggesting an event, rather than showing it outright. He seems to prefer just making things gross, and the heavy foreshadowing leaves the audience simply waiting for heads to roll. (A few scenes could be used to argue that Burton is simply being cruel to his audience.) The characters don't have much depth. For example, Ichabod Crane, here a New York constable rather than a schoolmaster, is sometimes fearless and take-charge, and sometimes comically squeamish, with nothing to explain the change. Katrina Van Tassel is the typical "feisty love interest" of many modern movies, with not many personal details to help the audience get to know her. In addition, the film follows "Scream" in the disturbing trend of having characters who don't care very much when their neighbors, friends, and relatives are killed, as long as they are safe. In one scene, Katrina says that she is done crying over the latest murder victim--who has only been dead a few hours. The film also jumps from storyline to storyline, in a way that I found unsatisfying, but can't detail without writing spoilers. The film lacks period authenticity (Katrina hangs out talking on Ichabod's bed), but Burton said on the DVD he wasn't attempting that. However, I found the inexplicable accents annoying: Johnny Depp does a 7/8ths English accent, Christina Ricci does a 2/3rds one, but Miranda Richardson speaks in a virtually flawless American accent. I did enjoy much of the dialogue, which is written in a suitably old-fashioned style, and most of the design, though I thought the bleached color added to the movie's coldness and artificiality. Many people enjoy the stylization of Burton's films, but here I thought it put too much distance between the characters and the audience. I had a better time watching the documentary about the movie's special effects that was included on the DVD.