Harefooted Halloween: Sleepy Hollow

What I Liked: The movie is beautifully shot.  It has an almost film noir vibe with the basically black and white color palette.  Those pops of red when blood flies are striking and leave a lasting impression.  Plus the fog, constant overcast sky and ridiculous amount of lightning add so much great atmosphere.  This is another example of you could pause the film at any time and always have a gorgeous image on the screen.

Likewise the production design is off the charts.  All the period costumes, dwellings and the look of the headless horseman evoke eeriness to the nth degree.  And with the pumpkins, fall foliage and decapitated corpses this is like pure uncut Halloween.  It’s good shit.

It earns its R rating by not holding back on the blood and murdering.  The body count gets high which includes a little boy and a pregnant woman’s unborn child.  There are also a few disturbing images of a bat’s head and a crow’s foot being sliced off.  That shit bothers me more than any of the human casualties.

Danny Elfman’s fantastic soundtrack immerses you right into the gothic story.  The use of pipe organ is sort of an old trick due to Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” historically being the standard bearer of horror themes but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an effective instrument.  And the copious amount of chorus makes the movie feel epic.

I appreciate that the headless horseman never loses sight of his mission.  When he targets his victim he doesn’t give a shit about anyone else even if they’re attacking him.  I mean he’ll lay a fucker out if they repeatedly get in his way but otherwise he’s focused like a T-800 on the task at hand.

What I Didn’t Like: Jesus the murder mystery plot is unfollowable.  I’ve seen this thing probably a dozen times now and I still have no fucking idea what the villain’s plan is.  I truly believe a whodunit is a type of picture you can’t make successfully and this falls in line with that.  The investigation comes and goes throughout too so I’m lost whenever it’s picked up again after a break.

There’s some slight steampunk gadgetry that Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp (A Nightmare on Elm Street)) uses during his examinations and it’s just stupid looking.  Magnifying glasses and scalpels existed in 1799 so this crap that Crane pulls out of his bag is unnecessary.

I’m not a huge fan of the action.  The headless horseman’s movements are really martial arty and the two on one fight he has reminds me too much of The Phantom Menace.  He does all these twists and twirls and weapon flipping and shit and it’s incredibly out of place.  I don’t need my headless horseman to be fancy and graceful with his fighting skills.  He should be more brute force and sorta clunky because you know, no head and all.  It’s interesting that the decision was made to have the guy act like he totally has a head where he can tell exactly what’s going on around him no problem.  Sure he’s a supernatural being but if they could’ve found a way to make him vaguely senseless that might’ve yielded intriguing results.

The action isn’t cut that well either with too many edits in general.  You can tell what’s going on most of the time but the finale in particular gets pretty messy.

Christopher Walken (The Addiction) is miscast as the headless horseman.  He’s too recognizable and singular to be anyone other than Christopher fuckin’ Walken so to play a rather anonymous character makes his appearance stand out even greater.  If I’m being honest here it’s also kind of a waste of talent for the small amount of screen time he has and to have the man only yell and growl unintelligibly.  And those fake teeth always bothered me because they look like they don’t fit properly.  It seems like Walken can’t close his mouth and like they’re very uncomfortable.

Overall Impressions: Oh boy this is a tough one.  I wanna love this movie, I really do because it’s an awesome feast for the eyes, the ambience is incredible, the music is thrilling, the carnage is cool and the look of the headless horseman is so badass.  The technical work on this film is simply outstanding. 

But man, the story they went with is garbled.  It’s a bigger minus than I would’ve thought.  For example Ichabod visits a witch out in the woods and her cave home is amazing with plenty of twisted roots, candles, cobwebs, bones, etc. littered around giving the place a perfect spooky tone.  The witch herself transforms into some freaky spirit with black holes for eyes, cracking gray skin and long white hair.  Excellent job in the makeup and design departments but what the fuck is Crane doing there?  I don’t know because I can’t follow the story.  So while the scene is neat by itself it doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight in the context of the film.  And this is the picture in a nutshell.  Fucking killer ass visuals but I’m not that emotionally invested in the plot or the characters.

I’m not saying the movie’s worthless or an absolute jumble but it does have serious issues.  It’s gotta be the best of Tim Burton’s B tier though.  I’ll definitely continue to revisit it over the years because the look and feel is too good to shove aside.  The script and acting isn’t the dealbreaker it probably would be in most other situations.  You should check it out if you haven’t already especially if you’re searching for something to set the mood for Halloween season.