When constable Crane's insistence on reason and logic to solve crimes becomes too much for his superiors, he is despatched from New York to the creepy village of Sleepy Hollow, where the inhabitants are all related to one another and move around in a phantasmagorical world of perpetual twilight. Here, a terrifying headless horseman has been rampaging through the Western Woods and chopping off people's heads. Crane arrives at the village with his bag of bizarre investigating equipment and a refusal to believe that anything other than a logical investigation will unmask the perpetrator, but soon gets caught up in a series of spooky events that are (almost) beyond even his reasoning.

What is really unmasked in Sleepy Hollow is Depp's ability for comic acting. Crane is a weak, cowardly constable and Depp's portrayal, from Crane's tendencies to fainting to his inability to ride a horse, is finely tuned and marvellously physical. Playing opposite him is Christina Ricci as love interest and assistant detective Katrina Van Tassel and, while the chemistry between them never really ignites (they first met on the set of Mermaids; Ricci was 11 at the time and Depp was dating her co-star Winona Ryder), she gives off a certain cinematic glow, stealing every one of her scenes.

With its eerie atmosphere and fantastical set-pieces, Sleepy Hollow is another example of what Burton does best. Nothing here is ever quite what you or I would imagine it to be. His visions of eighteenth-century New York and the village of Sleepy Hollow, perpetually draped in its veil of chilling mist, perfectly create the setting for this macabre fairytale.

Reviewed by Monika Maurer