Tim Burton’s #SleepyHollow is one of my favourite films, and rewatching it tonight, I noticed layers I never had before, specifically in how consistently it subverts tropes of Christianity defeating evil in these sorts of stories. (1/??)

This is a film that basically confirms that Satan/Hell/black magic exist as part of its universe but in which the Church is ineffective at defeating it. What does is a combination of light magic and a bit of science.

This is clearest in the scene where everyone in town crams into the church to escape the Headless Horseman, who isn’t able to enter. In most stories, this would be due to it being consecrated ground. In this story, it’s actually a white witch’s spell in chalk that keeps him out.

And to hammer this point further, a fight then breaks out during which one of the old men of the town bludgeons another one to death WITH A CROSS. Christianity in this film is only used for violence—here, when Ichabod’s mother was executed by his priest dad, etc.

Even in the film’s climax, when Katrina’s evil stepmother shoots Ichabod in the chest and the bullet aimed at his heart is stopped by a book in his pocket, that book isn’t a Bible as it would be in any other film, but a book of spells.

The film takes a great deal of delight in misdirecting viewers into thinking certain characters are villains using dark magic when actually they’re light magic users, the outward trappings of whose spells only look evil when viewed under a Christian lens.

Which makes a point about what actually happened in history, the Church either accidentally or deliberately misinterpreting other cultures’ magical rituals into evil acts to rail against.

In this film’s cosmology, however, we essentially have two forms of magic battling it out, and Christianity is entirely superfluous to the outcome, no matter how much it tries to be relevant.

The most heavenly image we see is a beautiful witch communing with nature and ethereally floating. And the scientist stands against Hell by finally embracing his mother and witch girlfriend’s magic, not thru Christianity.

Quite a bit of depth there for a horror film about an undead headless serial killer in the Olde Times.