Urban Legend
[DVD Info]

Six students at Pendleton College are taking a folklore/mythology class. Sasha Thomas (Tara Reid), Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum), Paul Gardner (Jared Leto), Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt), Damon Brooks (Joshua Jackson), and Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart). Sasha is a radio host on the campus radio. Parker is your average frat boy. Paul is a coldhearted school news reporter who will do anything to get a story. Natalie has a past she doesn’t want anyone to know about. Damon is a practical joker that will stop at nothing to prank someone. Brenda is in love with Paul but he doesn’t return the feelings. One day during class, they start learning about Urban Legends. Y’know…those legends that you’ve heard and sworn have happened to someone in your hometown? That same day Paul’s story breaks. “A psycho on campus,” Michelle Mancini (Natasha Wagner) was decapitated by a killer that was hiding in her back seat. Although Natalie claims she didn’t know Michelle, the fact is…they were best friends in high school. Soon, the people around Natalie start getting killed in the same way as those urban legends. Will Natalie die and become one of those myths? Or will she figure out who the killer is in time to save the rest of her friends…

Forensics weren't used in 1998.
Breaking into a professor's office and then accusing him of murder is not such a good idea.
Only one person, that being a serial killer, can own a hooded coat during the rainy season.
Janitors like to stand in the dark and be bumped into.
As long as you're wearing a little head set when on air on the radio...you can be heard from any room in the building.
No one takes someone being murdered on the radio seriously.
Saying you don't want to die will not get you out of being killed.

"Missing? Please! It's the weekend. He's most likley holed up in some hotel somewhere with a girl. Or a guy... farm animal... whatever! Weren't you ever eighteen?" ~Dean Adams.

Tara Reid is always so slutty in her movies. I guess she keeps playing those parts 'cause that's all they want from her. And she looked really fat when she was being killed. That's harsh to say...but...she looked FREAKISHLY fat...like they had a stunt double for her or something.

As far as I know…this was a new idea at the time. A killer who kills based off urban legends. A killer with a theme is always a good idea. It makes you follow the killings more closely. However, there is a big problem when you do that. You actually have to follow through and make sure everyone you kill is based on legends. Sadly to say…the killer didn’t. Professor Wexler (Robert Englund…yay! Freddy!) and Sasha’s death weren’t legends (unless there’s one about a girl getting killed in a radio station? I haven’t heard that one). While they only slipped up twice…but it still kinda makes the movie less exciting and it sticks out really bad.

There were other things that really bothered me about this movie. When the roommate is killed, they rule it as suicide because she slit her wrist…but this girl was STRANGLED…and she fought it pretty hard. You don’t even have to be a forensics specialist to know that if you struggle AND you’re being choked…it will show up as bruising, even after you’re dead. And who thinks “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” is just a suicide note? Just because she’s a goth girl? Please. Next…I’ve said this once…I’ve said this a thousand times…when you’re being chased, side by side by another car…SLAM ON THE BRAKES…I’m telling you…the other person will at least go a couple hundred more yards than you, giving you time to do something. Another point…if you’re being chased by a murderer…why would you go into an abandoned place to help someone who’s screaming? I wouldn’t do it. Fuck that I quit. My shift…is officially over. I’d wait for the police…or at least the campus police (not that they’re good at anything besides being useless and unhelpful). And finally…people who are in successful TV shows should not be in movies. Why? Simple…directors or producers or whoever it is…feels it necessary to add little jokes in pertaining to the character they play on TV. In Valentine they made an Angel joke…here they made a Dawson’s Creek joke for Joshua Jackson. Lame.

Oh…how did I feel about the movie? The premise was good…a new kind of slasher flick…which was cool. The main actress, kinda made the movie lamer than it should have been. She over reacted to everything and she got scared too soon in the movie and thought it was all about her after the second person died. Any normal person would have though…geez, what a weird coincidence. But if I were that girl's roommate I wouldn’t have been surprised considering she was meeting up to have sex with guys online and taking lithium. By the third or fourth person…then I’d start to wonder. I liked all the urban legends ‘cause it reminded me of when I was a kid. We would stare into the mirror and chant Bloody Mary and spin 10 times...and I remember the babysitter and the man in the house. I still to this day…check out the backseat of my car at night…and get into my car as fast as possible because I heard that gang members from Watsonville would hide underneath the car and cut your Achilles tendon and steal your car (not anymore since I don't live near Watsonville anymore). I never heard the old woman drying her dog in the microwave or the spider eggs in gum one though. They did forget to mention a few good ones…like the boyfriend and girlfriend in the car and the hook on their door, the girl who has a spider lay an egg in her pore and it pops and little baby spiders come out, and the cockroach eggs in the envelopes. You can’t kill people those ways…but they deserved an honorable mention. All in all…slasher movies are so predictable in the sense that you know it’s the person you least suspect and you know they’re going to make you think it’s someone else but it’s this person. It’s getting old. They need to think of something new. It was a good idea…but poorly executed. Not scary or suspenseful. Oh well… Because of this, the jury gives this flick:

(Unimpressed)

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