To be perfectly honest with you, my loyal viewers (we know that'll never happen!) I actually came into URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT with a sliver of enthusiasm. For some reason the previews made me eager to see it, despite just how bad the predecessor was and how much I hate neo-slash in the cinema. Whatever the cause, I came into UL:FC with a positive attitude and left with the video rental store manager's head on a stick! UL:FC follows the same tred premise as the original flick (and about a million other blood and guts serial knifer flicks) when a masked killer stalks the campus of a famed film school. Sure, the creators tried to make this movie follow the other UL movie by using famous urban legends as the methods for the killer's madness. Problem is, most of the good legends were used up during the first movie, while here they must reduce themselves to lesser legends, or even make some of their own up... kinda loses the miniscule spit bubble of inovation that UL had... though UL still sucked. Now, let's find out why this one sucked too...

Our opening credits actually aren't bad, more specifically the amusing title shot, as the title changes from URBAN LEGEND2 into URBAN LEGENDS... and then the subtitle materializes and we're back on the Candy Land Express Train to Depression Valley. The first scene is an attempt at levity, as a student film that ressembles a combination of TURBULENCE and the "Twilight Zone" episode "Terror at 20,000 Feet" is ruined hen the leading lady is revealed to be the worst actress ever to crawl into my DVD Player. From here we're basically intorduced to the rest of our cast, who are all the average faceless victims, of whom we never waste our time with any pitty or sadness when they finally croak. All the students at this illustrious film school are required to hand in their thesis films by the end of the semester, which is fast approaching. Our heroine, Amy, decides that she'll do a horror movie about a killer who uses urban legends as his motivation. This idea she recieves form the school security officer. And yes, that is Reese again, returning to continue her role as the FOXY BROWN lovin', gun toting, overweight,"sistah" with a badge! Looks like, after refusing to be part of the cover-up resulting from the first movie, Reese was fired and had to get a job here at the art school. Must be she was the only actress willing to be in the sequel... well, her and someone else I will unveil later. Just when I realized there WAS going to be a connection between this film and the first, that odd and dwindling spark of enthusiasm I had before just went up in a poof of black smoke.

Sure enough, a copycat killer begins to strike the friends (hopefully starting with Matt LeBlanc!), using Amy's script as his handbook and taking everyone out with urban legends... that were just made up by Amy and her friends... Okay, now I'll make the exact same joke I made in my review for the original UL (to go along with the repetative plot of the film): the bases their work on popular urban myths like "person wakes up in a tub of ice and one of their kidneys has been cut out", "everyone screams at midnight on campus during finals and someone really gets killed at that same moment", or "circus midgets invade an old woman's house, rape her 27 cats, and plant spider eggs up her ass". Oh, and can't forget the exact punchline too: okay, so that second one never happened... and it's still not funny this time either. As for the killer's outfit, the corny idea of the fur lined hooded jacket was dropped, this time in exchange for something only mildly more terrifying: a fancing mask and a black raincoat. Sure, I guess the phantasmic appearance of the mask could be frightening at times, if I saw it emerge from the darkness and start fencing with me, but here it just didn't terrify me all that much. Then again, I guess it is better than a hooded coat and a ski mask... On the plus side, the talentless "scream queen" of the group is killed off fairly early, which had me breathing a nice sigh of relief. This has no real bearing on anything, I'm just glad that she's dead. DEAD I TELL YOU! DAED!... err, DEAD!

Sadly though, the writers decide to go the way of many other slasher flicks, making everyone look like a suspect so as to "shock" and "surprise" us at the end when it's revealed to be Chuck Woolery. This is probably to keep us confused and constantly guess, distracting our energy so as to take our attention away from just how genuinely weak and hollow the flick is in EVERY department including gore (though I have to give it to the FX crew for the one good gore scene, as a girl is decapitated by a window), sex, and story flow! In the end it turns out that Professor Solomon is the killer... completely out of left field with some obscenely cheesy motivation like that of the killer in THE BONE COLLECTOR. I guess that the Prof was supposed to be a finalist in some Alfred Hitchcock movie contest back when he was a student. But, a tie-breaker judge was needed to decide the victor, who apparently would get a free ride to Hollywood stardom. That breaker was Amy's father, who is pretty much responsible in part for Solomon losing any chance at stardom and winding up a loser teacher instead. Now, for revenge, he plans to kill off Amy, take credit for another student's masterpiece (since he's now killed everyone in the cast off, eliminating any witnesses), and finally get his shot in Hollywood. Well, thanx to Reese's soul sister meddling once more (and an amusing scene involving a mad dash through a pile of prop firearms), Solomon gets his shot alright, and it comes in the form of a hot lead injection right to the chest... or does he? Turns out the whole thing was just a movie within a movie... within a movie?! All this confusion aside as to whether this crap actually happened or was just all some bad dream, we see a cameo by UL's slasherette, Brenda (Rebecca Gayheart... whose name I won't even waste energy on mocking), as she plays Prof Solomon's nurse. This is followed by Aflred Hitchcock music... you wish Ottman.

As I've stated in numerous places throughout this review, this movie was unimpressive by far, falling short of even the minor creativity behind the first film. Ottman obviously loves his Hitchcock (as every man should love their 'cock), but he attempts to combine it with an everyday slasher film and add the cliched "none of it was real" ending that we all know and hate from such flicks as BRAINSCAN, APRIL FOOL'S DAY, and numerous other movies. After this performance, I feel we need not fear the rise of any kind of Ottman Empire... Come on, that was just a little bit funny wasn't it?

DVD X-tras: This double-sided disc features a commentray track for the movie featuring director John Ottman; a "making of" featurette; gags and bloopers featurette; several deleted scenes, complete with optional commentary from Ottman; "Talent Files", which include bios and filmos; and theatrical trailers for a swarm of neo-slasher crap, including both URBAN LEGEND flicks and both I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER movies. I think I'm gonna puke...

Sequels: None... yet

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: SCREAM 2, I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, or any number of poseur neo-slasher crap sequels that I can't stand yet feel forced to review!