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Tim Burton brings the timeless Halloween classic Legend of Sleepy Hollow to the big screen in a stunning display of scenery, story telling, and cast.  The film is sheer Tim Burton and brings an intense faerie tale quality to the story of the Headless Horseman.  Gone is the pandering and philandering schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and in his place is Constable Ichabod Crane who is the epitome of Burtonian strangeness.  The Constable is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a spate of murders each involving the victim being beheaded.  The town is backwards even for 1799 standards with which the rest of the world follows and the Constable is ahead of his time.  It all ties in to make for an interesting and unique take on the story.

Now for what is wrong with Sleepy Hollow.  It dragged just a tad overall.  It cannot be considered a horror movie despite what the marketing suggests, the flourishes were all wrong, and the visuals over-wrought.  That said, it is an excellent fantasy/faerie tale.  The first part of the credits (smoke on black) and the scarecrow (aside from the false looking pumpkin) screamed Nightmare Before Christmas does Army of Darkness.  The film has a couple terribly fake looking vistas, a couple awesome ones, and the rest were run of the mill (for Burton).  The distinct lack of colour was overdone way too much and it was like Se7en in that respect, a pitifully obvious attempt at controlling the mood.  A couple scenes were cheesy hack-attack (you remember the commercials) in-betweening on the transformations.

All in all the film is impressive, but it must be restated that by most to all definitions it is not a horror and believing so going into the film ultimately sours the experience.

( Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)

All ideas, opinions, and information are from the reviewer and are not representative of any company or group involved with the creators and/or staff of the materials being reviewed.