This review is of the edited TV 14 version of the film. All thoughts below pertain to such as a review of the unedited version would likely be even more negative.
Finally, a film that lives up to its name! Heh, that’s not a compliment for this film, but still rather humorous to point out. I do appreciate the classic “Heads will roll” tagline since it makes sense for the film and makes for a nice pun. The problem is that the rest of the film falls apart rather quickly, preventing this film from ever getting any energy.
Ichabod is a detective and he doesn’t like how his country still likes to torture criminals because they can. (Grrrrreat start for this film right?……..) The court laughs it off and punishes him by sending Ichabod to Sleepy Hollow, where people have been beheaded left and right. The townsfolk tell Ichabod that it’s a supernatural being doing this, but Ichabod (Between yells and gasps) laughs them off. He starts to become a believer as the threat gets more and more real. The Masbeth family in particular seems to have been targeted a lot so Ichabod allows a kid from that family to work under him. This turns out to be a good move since Ichabod is scared of just about everything when he’s by himself.
Where to start right? Let’s go with the animal violence. It’s very excessive and I barely even need to get into it all. Horses, Bats, Dogs(I forgot, but I thought so…I may be mixing them up, still it was egregious!) That was already enough to cripple the film into nothingness, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg for this film. It continued to go from bad to worse as the movie went on.
Another terrible angle for the film is the fact that all of the townspeople seem to be fine with cheating on others. Several characters are exposed and blackmailed through this as the main villain gathers the dirt on everyone. Can’t we have a town full of law abiding citizens? Nah, that wouldn’t sell. The scenes were all rather terrible and even the ending has to force in a moment between the main villain and the headless horseman. It wasn’t exactly a two way street there though and then adding insult to injury was the fact that the villain was blown up by getting rammed into a tree. The scenes are just so terrible and completely unnecessary.
It goes without saying that the film is quite violent as well. The beheadings happen one after another with the heroes being unable to put a stop to them. The main heroine was no good either as she was quick to betray the main character and burn his things just because Ichabod suspected her father. (Who looked terrible the entire time) They all make up at the end rather quickly, but it’s a forced romance and doesn’t add anything to the film.
Sleepy Hollow’s also a little too long as it clocks in at nearly 2 hours. For this kind of film, 75-90 minutes would have done quite well. The film takes a long time to get to the point of why we should care about this adventure. The “good guys” don’t seem to be so good as long as the torture programs are still in effect and Ichabod is a pretty bad character. He’s constantly getting scared and grossed out. Instead of looking like a professional, he comes across as someone who’s simply in over his head. He even gets suckered by the locals as they throw a pumpkin in his face.
Even the Headless Horseman, who should have been cool ended up being a little underwhelming. His origin story was given, which was a mistake as per usual. His true form was that of a random barbarian who just liked to behead people while fighting. That sounds pretty impractical and I can see why he didn’t quite make it. Eventually, someone would just take him out while he was going for the perfect strike. Considering that he was a supernatural monster, he wasn’t very impressive either. A stronger main character could have probably taken him down for the count. The immortal horse would be the tougher opponent there.
Before the film went down the gutter, I must say that I did have my suspicions that it wouldn’t be so good. Leaving the city to go into a small village to fight the villain? As you may be aware, that’s not my kind of setting. I like seeing busy cities with large skyscrapers. Watching the heroes dashing around in the forest just isn’t as appealing to me. Not to mention that the characters needed to be more likable. I won’t blame Depp’s acting here though as he is much better when he’s not pretending to be a pirate. That being said, no amount of acting could save any of the characters when they’re written so poorly.
There’s not much more to say about this film considering how iffy it was. It was interesting that a magic angle was added here aside from the main villain and her spells. The main heroine had some powers as well, but they were much weaker and this angle wasn’t explored as much as it could have been. That’s definitely a bit of a missed opportunity for the film as well. Can any film adapt the Headless Horseman as well as in the classic Scooby Doo cartoon? We’re still waiting to find out!
Overall, This is another film that was just very bad. It’s boring and that’s a crime for any film. It’s fairly violent with no point behind some of the scenes. An example of this is when Ichabod opened someone up to prove some kind of point so we saw him come out all bloodied. That’s not an example of a really violent scene as it’s just his clothes (Still a little violent though) but just an unnecessary moment. Getting blown up by hitting a tree was definitely intense and all of the animal violence was not good either. Add in the main villain seducing people to further her plan, as well as another guy having an iffy affair and you get a film that is riddled with problems from start to finish. I highly recommend avoiding this film and you’d be better off watching reruns of Blues Clues for a few hours. At the very least, Blue is a very relatable character in that show.
Overall 1/10
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