Sleepy Hollow

Tim Burton changes Irving in one irreversible way. Irving’s Ichabod is a Connecticut schoolmaster and the rider’s reality stays arguable; here he is a constable banished from New York with a case of forensic instruments, and the horseman is real from the first act, so the question becomes whose hand guides it. Depp plays him squeamish, gagging at the autopsy table and fainting repeatedly, describing Ichabod as delicate and fragile and taking the detective side from Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes. In 1993 it was makeup designer Kevin Yagher’s, a cheap effects showcase built on a murder every five minutes. Scott Rudin later brought in Tom Stoppard, uncredited, to sharpen the bumbling and the Katrina romance, so the comedy here is a layer bought afterwards. No location work: the village went up on the Culden Faw estate over four months, twelve buildings finished inside and out. Lubezki and Burton wanted black and white, settling for bleach bypass to drain colour and deepen the blacks. Walken wears blue contacts and acrylic teeth shaped to look filed to points. A good fit if the puzzle you want is not the monster’s identity but who aims it, and you can take a fainting hero. Not a fit if you came for Irving’s schoolmaster and his open ended prank, settled here in the first act.