Metacritic Film

Sleepy Hollow

Starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Casper Van Dien, and Miranda Richardson

MPAA RATING: R for graphic horror violence and gore, and for a scene of sexuality

Paramount Pictures
Romance
111 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters November 19, 1999

In woods near the tiny New England village of Sleepy Hollow in the late 18th century, Icabod Crane (Depp) is sent to investigate a series of murders reportedly commited by a headless horseman.

WRITTEN BY
Washington Irving (story)
Kevin Yagher
Andrew Kevin Walker

DIRECTED BY
Tim Burton

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

65 / 100

Critic Reviews

90 Rolling Stone
Gorgeous filmmaking that brims over with funhouse thrills and ravishing romance.
88 Chicago Sun-Times
This is the best-looking horror film since Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
88 USA Today
This is a very bloody fantasy (reds do eke their way into the black-and-blues), but it's hard to think of another film with as many severed heads whose overall tone is so sweet.
80 Film.com
It is thrilling to look at, and that's more than one can say for the majority of pictures out there.
80 Time
Sleepy Hollow may be late for Halloween, but this trick is a real treat.
80 Newsweek Jeff Giles
At its best it's a marvel: bold, exciting and full of visions.
80 Variety
An entertainingly eccentric horror tale that envelopes the audience in a dreamy and bloody nightmare.
80 Village Voice
There isn't a bankable Hollywood director with a flintier sense of aesthetic integrity.
75 Portland Oregonian
It has a dickens of a time telling a story.
75 Chicago Tribune Marc Caro
Visually sumptuous and playfully creepy.
75 San Francisco Examiner
There must be nine or 10 thwacks to the neck throughout Sleepy Hollow, and Burton finds a different way to make the resulting severed noggin fall as though you'd forgotten the last one.
75 New York Post
As a horror movie, even one inspired by the kitschy Hammer horror films of the 1950s, it's disappointing.
75 Christian Science Monitor
Lots of brilliant filmmaking and high-spirited acting, at least until the story turns repetitious and formulaic in the last 30 minutes.
70 Los Angeles Times
More creepy and flesh-crawling than overwhelmingly gory, it nevertheless takes pride in characters who get splattered with blood as often as take-out fries get doused with catsup.
70 Salon.com
The look of Burton's Gothic dream landscape, both lulling and energizing, is vested with so much power that it could almost substitute for narrative drive.
70 LA Weekly
There's so little going on with either the film's story or its characters, however, that there is plenty of time to get lost in cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's eerily beautiful visuals.
70 TNT RoughCut
In between all this head-scratching nonsense, Sleepy Hollow can be fun, usually whenever the Headless Horseman shows up for swordplay that's better than anything in "The Phantom Menace."
70 TV Guide
A triumph of genre filmmaking.
70 Film.com
Even though it delivers on frights and special effects, and is well-acted and gorgeous to look at, never really surprises us.
67 Entertainment Weekly
Little more than a lavish, art-directed slasher movie.
63 Charlotte Observer
The film, though seldom sleepy, is often hollow.
63 New York Daily News
A feast of imagery.
63 Philadelphia Inquirer
Your body's sitting there in the theater, but it feels as if your head is someplace else.
63 Baltimore Sun
An uneven, if lively, diversion.
63 Mr. Showbiz
Burton's films are endearing and impassioned despite the fact that they generally fail to tell a whole story, create a single rounded character, or inspire even mild laughs or chills.
63 Miami Herald
Despite its flaws, Sleepy Hollow stays with you, the dark beauty of its images powerful enough to invade your dreams.
60 Dallas Observer
Hasty pacing makes for a rich and exciting movie, but not an especially spooky or spellbinding one.
60 Slate
A ferocious yet lyrical piece of filmmaking--an enchanted bloodbath.
60 Washington Post
In Burton's hands, Washington Irving's spooky classic is reincarnated as an overripe, grisly Goth cartoon.
60 The New York Times Janet Maslin
Turns the tale of the Headless Horseman into the pre-tabloid story of a rampaging serial killer.
58 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It all comes together to be a remarkably dull movie.
50 Austin Chronicle
Flawed at its core but stunning nonetheless.
50 Boston Globe
A gorgeous screenful of period eye candy.
40 Chicago Reader
Tim Burton's new movie is gorgeous -- shot by shot it may be the most impressive thing he's done.
25 San Francisco Chronicle
A film with no theatrical core and no integrity in the writing, acting or storytelling.

CLOSE THIS WINDOW

©2009 CNET Networks Inc. All rights reserved.