Here’s How To Stream Tim Burton’s Best Horror Movie for Free Right Now
Though he’s long been associated with the creepy, the dark, and the Gothic, Tim Burton isn’t necessarily a horror filmmaker. He flirts with horror a lot, and even veers into all-out frightening territory in individual sequences within his films, from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure to Batman Returns. When it comes to pure horror, though, Burton doesn’t have that many entries in his filmography.
Which isn’t to say you can’t find a great Tim Burton horror movie. In fact, the one time he leaned into horror harder than any other point in his career produced one of his best films, and it’s free to watch right now.
Released in 1999, Sleepy Hollow was directed by Burton and scripted by Se7en mastermind Andrew Kevin Walker. With those two names on board, the film manages to merge Walker’s knack for grim storytelling with Burton’s more whimsical, Gothic fantasy sensibilities. Based on Washington Irving’s iconic American tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” it’s the story of Ichabod Crane’s (Johnny Depp) encounter with The Headless Horseman. But this is not the story you know.
This time around, Crane is cast as an intelligent, tech-savvy detective who’s called away from the city to head out to Sleepy Hollow and investigate a string of deaths. Squeamish and often shaky in front of corpses, Ichabod is nonetheless determined to solve the crime, no matter what the scheming town fathers might have to say about it. But Sleepy Hollow is not an ordinary town, and the more the young detective gets into the facts in the case, the more he discovers that something not entirely natural is stalking the land.
Now, is Sleepy Hollow scary, if you’re the kind of person who regularly takes in films like Sinister and Skinamarink? Probably not, but it does feature some wonderfully creepy visuals, from the design of the Headless Horseman himself to a tree that seems to bleed human blood instead of sap. It’s one of those horror movies that even the most skittish horror viewers can probably stomach, as it’s so frequently lightened by Burton’s fantastical direction. It’s a dark fantasy laced with wonderfully macabre moments and a wicked sense of humor, and it’s got an incredible Burton ensemble to back it. You’ll find everyone from Christina Ricci to Miranda Richardson to Christopher Lee lurking in this one, and as a bonus, you can even watch it with your scaredy-cat friends.
Sleepy Hollow is streaming for free on Pluto TV.
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