Headless Horseman

Well the cover/poster for this 2022 action horror movie titled "Headless Horseman" definitely was interesting enough to make me stop and take notice. And with this being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to watch it.

But I have to say that I was initially thinking that the movie would be a knock-off of the "Ghostrider" movies doing a cross-over with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". I mean, look at the cover of the movie, doesn't that say it all. Despite that, I opted to watch what writer and director Jose Prendes had to offer.

And when those two dreaded words, The Asylum, appeared on the screen, I must admit that my expectations for "Headless Horseman" went from slim to none. But still, I opted to give the movie a fair chance.

The storyline in "Headless Horseman" was pretty straight forward, and it made for an easy viewing. However, writer and director Jose Prendes didn't bring anything new to the genre, nor did he churn out an outstanding script for the movie. "Headless Horseman" is one of those movies that are bad enough to warrant a single viewing just for the fun of it, but not good enough to sustain more than a single guilty pleasure viewing.

The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, given the contents of the script and storyline. You're not in for an evening of Shakespearian cinema here, but that is of course a given. The only familiar face on the cast list, to me at least, was actors Sean Whalen and Michael Paré.

Visually then "Headless Horseman" was actually fair enough for a movie from The Asylum, and at least that counts for something.

While I managed to endure all 85 minutes of this 2022 action horror from The Asylum, then I wasn't particularly entertained. It is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Nor is it a movie that I will watch a second time.

My rating of writer and director Jose Prendes's "Headless Horseman" lands on a three out of ten stars.

No pun intended - I am really happy with my summary line to be honest. Even more so because I just came up with it. The connections or similarities to that other movie are just too present. Too obvious in a sense. It does have Michael Pare who is able to hold a movie on his own - and he may be one of the reason why I did rate this better than you may expect.

On the other hand I have been known and blamed for being too kind when it comes to my voting ... so there you go. I do like some of the other actors too - not that I would call this their finer work. Special effects are more or less what you would expect from a low budget movie. Maybe a bit better? Again, low bar and all that - can't compare this with bigger budgeted movies ... like The Crow ... well you shouldn't.

Cheap even by Asylum's standards and lacks the charm I normally find many of their films to have, even though they are normally not "good". They're normally fun, and entertaining this was just an unoriginal dull plot.

No new or interesting touches or ideas.

The acting wasn't great, the lines were stiff and, the location was super lazy in setting. It just didn't have anything fun going on, the plot tried to be too serious. Which really isn't Asylum's strong suit.

Like if you are going to be serious, your film actually has to be good. This wasn't, I've seen worse, but I did feel like this was a waste of time.

This boring mix of Ghost Rider and The Crow is the cheapest movie I've seen they asylum release since their early DV Cam output.

No joke, about 40% of the movie takes place on a bike overpass of a road!

The "headless horseman" aspect is as random and pointless as you can get. The devil decides to give our hero a flaming pumpkinhead for no reason. He also gets a single Wolverine hand to shoot green electricity out of.

The boring plot is this: a guy is killed by his fiancé's biker gang drug lord leader (I hate when that happens) and the devil gives him a deal: revenge for his soul. He then rides around and talks to people asking where they've taken his darling before killing them in bland cgi ways.

To make things even more lame, about an hour in he decides to trust the villains will let her go if he leaves so he does and goes to hell early!

They set up for a sequel as if anyone would ever want 4 more minutes of this story.

I don't know how this tripe gets made. The acting is just laughable to the point where you almost cringe every time a character says a line.

I saw the picture for this movie and thought it looked like a Ghostrider rip off. Which it kind of is. But on a shoestring budget.

The villains are particularly bad, especially the main boss - Angel. A kind of Julian Sands lookalike who tries to sound like Agent Smith from The Matrix.

The one saving grace is Amanda Jones who plays Sophia. She does well enough despite the diabolical script. But even that will leave most movie fans wishing they'd never wasted their time.