Another Tim Burton film during the marathon, another comfort food movie. It sounds like I might be damning Sleepy Hollow with faint praise, but that’s certainly not my intention. While the crooked plot cooked up by the cabal at the film’s center might be needlessly complicated, and it’s oftentimes content to coast on its admittedly lavish set design, Tim Burton’s love letter to the Hammer horror films of the ‘60s and ‘70s has considerable charms. First and foremost amongst these is the set design. Burton and his team went out of their way to duplicate the atmospheric, surreal feeling many of those soundstage-only British productions featured, and they wildly succeeded. Being a production with a much higher budget, there’s more actual outside shooting than you’d find in a film with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but many of the most evocative shots (such as our first glimpse at the Van Tassel manor, or the entirety of the western woods scenes) are composed using forced perspective and soundstages; worlds constructed entirely for the purpose of casting an otherworldly pall over the proceedings. The decision to utilize CGI in the film seems incongruous, but the use is, thankfully, sparse. The film practically drips with classic horror visuals from that most venerable of production companies: fog-laden hayfields, blood with the unnatural color and consistency of latex paint, ornate gothic interiors, and British character actors crowding the frame. Which brings me to Sleepy Hollow’s second triumph – casting. It’s a joy watching Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid, and Michael Gough slap on the 18th century duds and engage in all sorts of nefarious activities, to say nothing of Christopher Lee’s memorable cameo, framed in the shot with menacing wings sprouting from his sides. Christopher Walken hams it up to the extent that even though his face is probably on-screen for all of two minutes, he’s created an indelible image. Johnny Depp ties it all together in one of his last wonderful performances before he “went full retard.” He’s alternatingly fey, manic, cowardly, and pompous, yet keeping it in reign enough to create a sympathetic, believable comic character, caught between the superstitions and folklore of the old world and the burgeoning Industrial Revolution and reason on the other. A thoroughly modern man in the middle of a deliciously old-fashioned film.
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