Now available on DVD
Cast:
Billy Aaron Brown as Liam
Rebecca Mozo as Ava
Richard Moll as Kolchak Jefferson Stillwall
Arianne Fraser as Tiffany
M. Steven Felty as Pa Rusk/Sgt. Mosby Rusk
Trish Coren as Lizzie
Elizabeth Prestel as Candy
Directed by Anthony Ferrante
Review:
I did not think First Look Studios could dish out anything worse than Day of the Dead this year, but sure enough, they proved me wrong. Headless Horseman, with its irritating cast of characters, absurd script, and laughable FX, is the quintessential made-for-Sci-Fi-Channel movie. But instead of a 60-foot alligator or mutant python, all it has to offer is a boring headless guy. The filmmakers have managed to strip Washington Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, of all its good elements and replace them with a dull, cliché-ridden disaster.
Seven college kids get lost on their way to a party and end up in Wormwood, an old-fashioned town full of creepy hillbillies. A resident girl informs them they are just in time for Wormwood’s Headless Horseman Celebration. According to a 200-year old legend, a local man named Calvin Montgomery once tortured children on All Hallow’s Eve until he was decapitated by angry townsfolk. Now, his spirit is said to return on Halloween and claim the heads of seven young people. The seven visitors soon realize they were brought to this town for a reason, and must fight to stay alive until midnight when the headless horseman is sent back to Hell.
The seven protagonists, along with all the Wormwood townsfolk, are obnoxious, unsympathetic, and complete clichés. Among the kids: the brainless bimbo, the hot guy, the artsy girl, the cocky jerk, the comic relief, the quiet nerd, and the good girl. From the very beginning, it is blatantly obvious who the survivors will be. And since when do all the cliques from your high school get together for a road trip? It’s like a bad Breakfast Club sequel. The Wormwood townspeople are equally lame stereotypes who are meant to be creepy but do not intimidate in the least. All the actors are grating to watch, especially Arianne Fraser who can’t even pull off playing the dumb one. Honestly, how hard is it to play an idiot? I should not be surprised when the only real actor in the movie is Richard Moll â aka the guy who played Bull on Night Court.
The bad performances are only made worse by Zachary Weintraub’s script. Aside from the terrible characters, the dialogue is wooden and the story is a joke. Firstly, the film mixes Greek mythology and Western folklore with terrible results. There are multiple references to the mythical Hydra. For instance, the headless horseman only arises when the Hydra constellation is visible in the sky, because the Hydra guards the gates of Hell. Yeah. Furthermore, Weintraub beats us over the head with the number seven â every seven years, Headless comes back for seven heads when the seven-headed Hydra appears. Okay, we get it!
The headless horseman himself is completely dull and his CGI neck stump looks fake. He can only kill one person at a time, giving the protagonists more than enough time to escape. And instead of wielding a sensible weapon like a sword, he rides around with a spiked flail or a halberd. Yes, medieval weapons for a character who, in the film, was born in the 1800s. He does manage to creatively decapitate two – and only two – characters in ways I have never seen before. Since the film is all about decapitation, more scenes like these would have been an improvement. Not helping matters is the movie’s use of computer-generated blood. Some Karo syrup and food dye could have made a world of difference.
One Wormwood character claims their legend is the “real” story of the headless horseman and refers to Irving’s Sleepy Hollow as “white-washed”. Then the film proceeds to trash the literary classic with asinine characters, a complete mess of a story, and one very lame villain. Bad acting and silly writing can sometimes be overlooked, but Headless Horseman is far too dumb and too boring to be salvaged. If a few severed heads could send this movie back to Hell, I might consider it a small price to pay.
