tek's rating: ¾

Urban Legend (R)
Bloody Disgusting (2); IMDb; Phoenix Pictures; Rotten Tomatoes; Scream Factory; Sony Pictures; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 1998, but I didn't see it until 2017. Apparently it was quite poorly received by most critics, but it was financially successful. And now that I've seen it, I really can't understand why anyone wouldn't like it, unless they have absolutely no interest in slasher movies. Or they could just be comparing it unfavorably to Scream, which started the late 90s slasher revival trend. But I really don't think that's fair. Anyway, I myself am not a big fan of the genre, but there are plenty such movies that I do want to check out someday. Probably I have a different sensibility than hard core horror fans, and quite possibly movie fans in general. But I thought it was a decent movie. An interesting concept, and plenty of familiar stars.

It begins with a young woman named Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner) driving and listening to music, when she realizes she's almost out of gas. So she stops at a gas station, but the attendant seems pretty creepy. That reminded me of a short film called "Suspicious," which I saw on Exposure. It was apparently based on the same urban legend as this movie's opening scene, and it's because of that short film that I knew what was going on here, but unlike that film, in this scene the gas station attendant had a really bad stutter that prevented him from warning Michelle that there was someone in the back seat of her car, with an axe. Also unlike "Suspicious," in this movie the killer ends up succeeding in killing the woman.

Soon after that, a student at Pendleton University named Parker (Michael Rosenbaum) is relating another urban legend to his friends Natalie (Alicia Witt) and Brenda (Rebecca Gayheart), about how 25 years ago, a professor at the university had killed a bunch of people in Stanley Hall, and then killed himself. The building hasn't been used since, but there's no information available about the supposed massacre, which Parker says is because the university covered the story up. While he's telling them about all this, another student named Paul (Jared Leto), who is a reporter for the school's newspaper, corrects Parker on some details, though Paul doesn't believe the story is true.

Sometime later, when everyone hears about the death of Michelle (who I guess was a student there, too), they're all talking about it, and asking if anyone knew her, but everyone says they didn't. It later turns out that Natalie had been friends with her in high school, but hadn't spoken to her for the past two years, ever since an incident which I don't want to spoil. (But I will say that as soon as she told one of her friends the whole story, I guessed who the killer would turn out to be, and I was right.) Um... but anyway, there are more characters I should mention. There's a practical joker named Damon (Joshua Jackson); and a student named Sasha (Tara Reid), who hosts a call-in radio show and is also Parker's girlfriend; and Natalie's goth roommate, Tosh; and a professor of folklore (including urban legends) named Wexler (Robert Englund); and a vaguely creepy janitor (Julian Richings); and the university security guard, Reese (Loretta Devine, whom I know from The Carmichael Show); and a dean who was constantly trying to quash any talk of murders at the school.

Well... of course several characters end up being murdered, but I don't want to reveal exactly who they are. I'll just say Natalie is the one who spends most of the film trying to figure out what's going on, while most of the others don't believe people are even being killed. (There are various explanations for this.) But she gets some help in her investigations from Paul. But of course we the viewers see the murders, so we know Natalie is right all along... not just that people are being killed, but that the killer is basing the method of the murders on various urban legends. Other than that, I don't really want to say anything else, except that the killer always wears a parka (which leads to red herrings, because any number of people can just happen to own similar-looking parkas). Anyway... even though I predicted who the killer was and more or less why they were doing it, I still found the whole movie entertaining, and I found each murder at least mildly scary (because, you know, it's murder). And some bits of the movie were mildly amusing. And I liked the ending.

There are two sequels, Urban Legends: Final Cut and Urban Legends: Bloody Mary.


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