Movie · Prime Video · 1999

Sleepy Hollow

Reason against a curse. Stylish, violent, and not a family legend.

Ichabod Crane arrives with the modern tools and finds a hamlet that has already agreed to a lie. That is a good beginning. Tim Burton's picture then decides the lie is a curse with a beautiful horse, and the heads come off so the frames will be remembered. The legend of the horseman, told aloud on a porch, is better than the film.

Not for children. Read them the old story if you want the shiver, and leave this one on the shelf.

The eight

Industry
4/10
He wants detection to be a science. The film lets the science lose.
Household
3/10
A dead mother, a romance. Not a house.
Piety
4/10
Superstition is the air. His disbelief is a kind of integrity, until it isn't.
Courage
6/10
He stays in a town that is killing people, with no gift for it but persistence.
Republic
5/10
A village with elders, a cover-up, and a constable from away.
Temperance
3/10
The beheadings are the show.
Truth
4/10
He wants the natural explanation. The film wants the legend.
Stewardship
4/10
A town secret is what the dead are collecting on.

Live historicallyTell a local story to a child without adding a monster you have to show them.

Movie · Prime Video · 2002

Scooby-Doo

The gang that will not leave a frightened friend is the good idea. The movie is cruder than the idea.

The old idea is sound and worth telling a child: the frightening thing usually has a person inside it, and you do not have to look alone. This picture keeps that idea and piles on gags that have nothing to do with it. The friends reuniting is the part that scores. The rest is a theme park of its own.

A child who already knows the gang can watch the unmasking with you. Skip ahead to it if you must. Say that being scared together is allowed, and that someone is usually benefiting from the fear.

The eight

Industry
4/10
Mystery-solving is a job they are bad at separately and all right at together.
Household
4/10
Friendship is the household. It is real, and it is also a punchline.
Piety
3/10
The mask comes off, which is a small reverence for the truth.
Courage
5/10
They go into the scary room for each other.
Republic
4/10
A park full of tourists. The public is mostly a crowd to frighten.
Temperance
3/10
The jokes go low. The story did not need them to.
Truth
6/10
The monster is a man who wanted something. That is the right kind of reveal.
Stewardship
4/10
Loyalty is what they hand each other. The film hands you a sequel.

Live historicallyWhen a child is frightened of something in the house, look at it together until it has an ordinary name.