Once again Tim Burton treats us to one of his dreamy fairytales, this time reworking Washington Irving's classic story of the headless horseman. For Sleepy Hollow Burton brings back many of his regular collaborators from previous pictures, it seems that every five minutes someone pops up who has been in one of his previous films, including Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, the New York constable who is sent North to investigate three beheadings in a quiet farming community by his superiors to try out his firm belief that science is the future of police work. There he is drawn into a conspiracy of silence amongst the head figures of the small town as he battles to prove that the killer is very much human, and not the phantom headless horseman that everyone else claims.
With Burton surrounding himself with like-minded individuals in both cast and crew he is allowed the freedom he needs to evoke the wonderful images that run around his head. Mostly filmed on soundstages, the town and it's surrounding woods are carefully crafted to create a wonderful mood complete with foreboding fog and menacing scarecrows. But like most of Burton's films Sleepy Hollow is not as dark as you might think. With Depp Hammer-ing it up for all he's worth and the rest of the cast keeping pace with the tone his performance sets, never taking things too seriously but also steering clear of outright farce. A hugely enjoyable movie and to top it all Christopher Walken appears as the horseman, although for obvious reasons you don't get to see his face too often. |
