Ah, Headless Horseman (2007). The Sci-Fi Channel (back before it was “SyFy”) must have looked at Sleepy Hollow and thought, “What if we remade it, but with none of the atmosphere, none of the budget, and all of the acting ability of a local haunted hayride?” And thus, this TV-movie was born—an abomination that gallops in circles for 90 minutes, waving a rubber axe and begging to be taken seriously. Spoiler: it shouldn’t be.
Once Upon a Time in Wormwood Ridge (Population: Dumb Teenagers)
The movie opens in 1862, because every good horror story needs to remind you that bad things happened back when everyone wore suspenders and died of tetanus. Two Confederate soldiers wander through the woods, having apparently deserted both their army and any sense of purpose. Enter the Headless Horseman—an undead guy who rides in, decapitates them, and leaves before the audience can ask, “Why does a ghost care about the Civil War?”
Cut to modern day, where a group of seven teenagers—each one genetically engineered to be less interesting than the last—head off to a Halloween party. You’ve seen this crew before: the horny one, the loud one, the “sensible” girl who won’t make it to the credits, and the guy whose only job is to say things like “Dude, this shortcut will save us, trust me.”
They take said shortcut through Kansas, which is cinematic code for “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” After hitting a bear trap (because this is the kind of town that leaves them lying around like road spikes), they’re rescued by Candy, a suspiciously friendly tow truck driver who seems way too comfortable with the word decapitation.
Candy drives them to her town, Wormwood Ridge—a place so cursed that even Google Maps has ghosted it. The locals are busy prepping for the annual “Headless Horseman Celebration,” which apparently involves bad lighting, fake fog, and exactly one person who’s read the script.
Decapitation Nation
It doesn’t take long for the Horseman to show up and start taking heads like he’s building a collection. Poor Seth is the first to go, because he’s the kind of guy who checks out a creepy junkyard alone. His girlfriend Ava discovers his headless corpse, and the rest of the group responds with the kind of emotional range you’d expect from people who just lost their parking spot.
Candy, ever the expository queen, drops the backstory: The Headless Horseman is really Calvin Montgomery, a 19th-century child killer who got hanged by the town and now comes back every seven years to claim seven heads. He’s sort of like a demonic Santa Claus, except instead of toys, he brings trauma.
The gang decides to run into the forest—which, in a horror movie, is like signing your own death certificate but with more running and worse shoes. Naturally, a fog rolls in, the Horseman appears, and heads start rolling faster than the film’s budget. Tiffany is decapitated next, presumably because her agent refused to negotiate for a second scene.
Welcome to the World’s Dumbest Town
You might think the teens would flee in terror, but they somehow keep ending up back in Wormwood, which is the movie’s way of saying, “We can’t afford another location.” Every attempt at escape ends in someone being beheaded or screaming about bad cell reception.
There’s Pa Rusk, Candy’s dad and local murder enthusiast, who alternates between muttering about “the curse” and looking like he’s one unpaid bill away from snapping. Richard Moll (of Night Court fame, bless his soul) plays Kolchak Stillwall, a general store owner who delivers every line as if he’s allergic to enthusiasm. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when the cast realizes halfway through shooting that the paycheck might bounce, this is your answer.
By the time Headless kills Doc (yes, there’s a guy named Doc), the audience has already lost track of who’s left alive—and who’s playing who—because everyone dresses like they got their wardrobe from a Spirit Halloween clearance bin.
The Curse of the Budget
Let’s talk production value. Headless Horseman looks like it was filmed through a potato and edited by someone whose only instruction was “make it spooky.” The Horseman himself appears to be wearing a Party City costume glued to a middle-aged stuntman’s torso. His horse, bless it, looks more confused than menacing—like it’s wondering when it can go back to filming toothpaste commercials.
The special effects range from “Sci-Fi Channel bad” to “suspiciously unfinished student film.” Decapitations are handled with quick cuts, smoke machines, and a liberal use of off-screen imagination. When the Horseman finally bursts into flames at the climax, it’s less “terrifying inferno” and more “someone left a lighter near the CGI folder.”
Even the fog looks like it’s giving up halfway through each scene.
Headless, Meet Clueless
Our heroes eventually realize that the only way to stop the curse is to destroy the Horseman before he collects all seven heads. Which would be great if they didn’t spend 80% of the movie doing the exact opposite of anything resembling a plan.
Nash, the resident mechanic, manages to fix a car, only to immediately drive it into the Horseman’s path and lose his head. (Literally. I’m not making that up.) The others are forced back to town by Pa Rusk, who, in true “crazy villager” fashion, ties them up as an offering to the ghost that eats teenagers.
Candy finally grows a conscience and frees the survivors, revealing that she’s not from Wormwood—which might explain why she has more teeth than the rest of the cast. Together, they decide to lure the Horseman to a bridge because apparently ghosts can’t cross running water (a rule that horror movies treat like the fine print in a credit card agreement).
Cue the finale: Candy hooks the Horseman with a tow cable, drags him onto the bridge, and he promptly bursts into flames. The town dissolves into dust, everyone we didn’t care about vanishes, and Candy drives off with the survivors as if they just won America’s Next Top Decapitator.
The Real Horror: The Dialogue
The script sounds like it was written by someone who only watched horror movies through static. Characters constantly announce their intentions out loud—“Let’s split up!” or “We should run!”—as if narrating for the visually bored.
At one point, someone actually says, “This town gives me the creeps,” which is screenwriting code for “we ran out of dialogue and need to remind you this is spooky.” Every conversation is an Olympic event in bad exposition, and every joke lands with the force of a damp pumpkin.
By the time the movie starts explaining the “seven heads every seven years” rule for the fifth time, you’ll be rooting for the Horseman just to speed things along.
Final Thoughts: Headless, Heartless, Hopeless
Headless Horseman is the cinematic equivalent of a middle school Halloween dance—awkward, underlit, and full of people pretending they’re having fun. It’s a film that thinks fog machines can substitute for tension and that decapitations can distract from acting.
To its credit, it’s not unwatchable—it’s just aggressively mediocre, like the Halloween candy nobody wants but you eat anyway because it’s there. The concept had potential, but the execution feels stitched together by someone who once saw Sleepy Hollow on a plane and thought, “Yeah, I can do that.”
What we end up with is a film that’s neither scary nor campy enough to enjoy ironically. The true horror isn’t the Headless Horseman—it’s realizing there are still 20 minutes left and he’s your only hope of ending it.
Grade: D-
Headless Horseman is what happens when you lose your head and your budget. Somewhere, Ichabod Crane is watching this and thinking, “Maybe decapitation wasn’t the worst option.”
