Sleepy Hollow – 1999

There are some things from your past that stick with you even if you don’t realize they do.  When I was a child, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was the first story I ever read on my own that scared the hell out of me.  The Disney version freaked me out as well and I remember avoiding it whenever it was on television (keeping in my that back then my options were few…we didn’t get cable television until I was in junior high!).  As I got older, I never gave it much thought, but if anyone mentioned anything connected to Sleepy Hollow, I’d get chills.  So, as much as I like Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, there was not one part of me that ever felt compelled to see this film.

But it’s October, the time for scary movies and I needed a film to watch today that was short.  So Sleepy Hollow won out.

It’s a good film.  Interesting story, top-notch acting, and the sets and costumes were fabulous.  There was only one problem with it:  It wasn’t scary.

I feel like I’m missing something. I guess the intention was to be over the top but instead of over the top I just found the comedic aspects of the film hokey.  Sure, I guess it’s supposed to be funny that all the supernatural stuff freaks out Ichabod Crane, but that works much better when Crane is a school teacher.  Crane as a policeman but still a chicken really doesn’t work for me.

It did keep me interested, though.  I couldn’t imagine how they were going to make the Horseman real and the legend actually being true was a great touch.  But I was terribly disappointed that none of it frightened me.

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