Sleepy Hollow

Released 1999
Stars Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson, Casper Van Dien, Mark Pickering, Michael Gough, Jeffrey Jones, Ian McDiarmid
Directed by Tim Burton

Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow is as stylish and atmospheric as any motion picture to arrive in theaters this year. Unfortunately, those aspects are its lone strengths. The film suffers from tepid performances, feebly drawn characters, and a meandering narrative. Regardless of how many eerie, fog-shrouded forest sequences, gruesome decapitations, and gorgeous matte paintings Burton offers us, Sleepy Hollow's look cannot obfuscate its numerous, glaring weaknesses.

Sleepy Hollow opens with a creepy sequence of great promise. The year is 1799, and the setting is a misty road near the small upstate New York hamlet of Sleepy Hollow. A coach carrying the wealthiest man in the district is set upon by a mysterious, headless rider, who, with a slash of his sword, deprives Sleepy Hollow of its most prominent citizen. Other equally grizzly deaths follow, and, in all cases, the killer takes the victim's head with him. The men and women of Sleepy Hollow are convinced that they are being haunted by the demonic spirit of a dead Hessian trooper who was slain in the Western Woods - a place into which no sane person will venture.

Summary by James Berardinelli

The look of the picture was outstanding and the special effects were top-notch, but it just didn't quite work. Many aspects reminded me of "Edward Scissorhands" and "Nightmare Before Christmas." For example, many of the flashbacks seemed to be lifted directly from "Edward Scissorhands"--especially the beautiful scenes of the mother twirling in the falling blossoms, which looked exactly like Winona Ryder twirling in the ice flakes. The score also seemed the same. I loved "Edward Scissorhands," but the similarity here seemed to be a ripoff instead of a director's style. --Bill Alward, July 18, 2001