JUST when you thought imagination had run dry, Tim Burton makes Sleepy Hollow and you are drowning in the stuff. It is typical of the man who changed Gotham City into Gothic City that he should take Washington Irving's famous ghost story and recreate it on an English sound stage, thereby controlling every aspect of the horror.
Crane is serious.
He is also inexperienced, humourless and quite stupid. Not surprisingly, and in a terrifying manner, he is proved wrong. Burton's brilliance can be compared to the Brothers Grimm. He has retained a childlike ability to believe in dreams, without using the sophisticated device of pastiche. The effects are superb, the atmosphere haunting, the performances rich and the look dark.