URBAN LEGEND Sucks too much to even be a sentimental favorite
Caught this one at a dollar theater, after having an inexplicable craving for it all day. Not sure why. I knew I'd probably check it out eventually, but for some reason, "should probably go see that movie" kept rattling around in my head that morning.
And I so desperately wanted this to be a sentimental favorite of mine. That dollar theater I went to became pretty much my favorite theater in town; a lovely place (the Showcase Grand, down on 1st St.) that always gets the funkier movies. On the way there, I listened to Nevermore's debut album and Iced Earth's The Dark Saga for the first time. It was a night of finding new things to love.
If the movie were great, I could include it in there too. Even if it was just okay. But, no. I will grant, however, that it's better than I Know What You Did Last Summer (and certainly better than its sequel).
What this one has that IKWYDLS didn't is an interesting premise. The fun thing about urban legends isn't that some people think they're real and they happened to that chick in your high school who had to take a year off for reasons unknown...it's that they might be real, somewhere, in some town, probably in Arkansas. And the premise behind this film is a determination to remove all doubt. Not a bad idea.
The execution is a little more iffy. Okay, it's a lot more iffy. It's all well-shot and looks very nice, but it's just bullshit, I'm afraid. One girl appears to be e-mailed, and the one writing her appears to be in the same room. What, was another computer smuggled in? Another phone port too?
I will admit that for most of its length, the opening scene was even pretty tense, even though it's been done before, in the anthology film Nightmares. And at least Nightmares didn't have the foolishness to have an axe decapitation in a car while the car was speeding down the highway. I mean, what gives here? Did the killer just assume the car (having no driver with a head) would slow to a safe and serene stop? And how much "swing" do you think one person can get with an axe in a closed-in little space like a car?
I could go on, but the murders in this movie, I suppose, have to be seen as creative works instead of plausible ones. And yeah, there's some fairly nifty deaths based on some familiar stories (although some are totally lost on me - one guy is force-fed Drano. What's that about?).
This movie also boasts one of the more ridiculously stupid false suspense scenes I've seen. Our heroine - who has witnessed the parka-shrouded killer in action (yeah, the killer is disguised with a big parka), looks down on her friend swimming in the college pool, which must be an incredibly humid place. Then, we see a figure walking on the pool deck towards the end that her friend is swimming in. In a parka. THIS FIGURE IS WEARING A PARKA IN A HEATED POOL ROOM. Then she takes it off and it's just a chick in a swimsuit about to go for a swim. Could you even imagine in the weirdest of worlds, a person who would actually take the trouble of changing into a swimsuit but actually go to the pool with a fucking PARKA on top of it?!?!?!?
Yeah, there's some neat murders and there's a share of laughs...but not enough of either, really. It could have used more murders, more tales for us to sink our teeth into...and spent less time trying to establish itself as a whodunnit (which any twit can figure out early on, since Scream 2 [and a long line of films before it] taught us that the killer is probably the character who serves no apparent purpose in the film).
That having been said, when all is said and done, the actor playing the part of the killer makes Charlton Heston look low-key and subtle, and that, I must say, is pretty damn entertaining. This does not, however, excuse just how bullshit this revelation is. Without giving anything away, let's just say that EVERY character in the film who's a suspect would need super-strength and stilts to match the strength and height of this parka-shrouded killer.
And there are, of course, more questions... the film avoided the Curtains mistake by having a completely different actor playing the killer with the hood on, which might have helped the mystery [such as it is] but was genuinely misleading... and what was with the phone call? Obviously not the killer's voice. Somebody saw Scream, I guess, and used a voice disguiser thingie.
The actors all do fine work with what little they're given. Alicia Witt has the strangest, most distracting profile of any new actress I've seen. And it's nice to see Danielle Harris as the super-bitchy Goth girl who just can't get enough sex. (sigh)
Strange that this has gotta be the first slasher movie in...how long?...to have a male as its top-billed star. Not that Jared Leto is really given much to do. Brad Dourif pops in for the opening scene and does a great job. And the college chief of security is played by...is that the "Don't move, dirtbag" chick from Police Academy? I'm pretty sure it is. I kept expecting her to say it.
But it's bad, people. Pretty much everything in this movie looks like bullshit under the slightest scrutiny. Why Fulci fans haven't flocked to this movie's defense, I don't know.
It doesn't even add up to a good time-waster. I just wish I knew what the "Phantom Doberman" is that Roger Ebert's talking about. |
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