Oct 20, 2017
Tim Burton's
adaptation of Sleepy Hollow plays pretty fast and loose
with Washington Irving's source material and for those of who us
who grew up with the more faithful Disney cartoon, that was an
aspect of this film that definitely took us by surprise.
Going into this, opinions were pretty mixed. Despite this
revisionist take on Ichabod Crane and a more complicated lore
surrounding the Headless Horseman, Chris loved this movie when he
saw it back in 1999. For Donna, the changes were too big a pill to
swallow and she was disappointed to discover it was more silly than
scary. Carlos had been so put off by the advertising that he'd
never even seen this all the way through.
Looking back on it now, Sleepy Hollow marks an interesting
point in the careers of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. What separates
this film from some of their less successful collaborations? Is it
even that separate? Did they change or did we? And did this more
objective viewing alter how any of us felt about it?
Topics include: the film's origins as a low-budget slasher, how
Scream reinvigorated the studio's interest in the project
and altered their entire approach, Chris' main gripe with the movie
and how a sub-genre of Italian horror films helped him reconcile
it, whether or not the Horseman should speak, what's really inside
the Tree of the Dead, the mean streak running through this that's
absent from most of Burton's other work, the exhaustingly
complicated final act, and much much more!