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Slasher films are the cockroaches of the movie industry; no matter how much you may actively try to get rid of them, or wishfully hope they’ll just go away, another generation always comes along. Back in the 80s, Jason, Freddie, and the Halloween “shape,” as well as an equally bloodthirsty horde of imitators that included deranged Santas, Australian werewolves, rapacious extraterrestrials, and pissed-off ex-girlfriends with cutlery, prompted much noisome outcry and frantic handwringing. That wave eventually ebbed, not so much because concerned PTA chapters and Jeffrey Lyons went on “Donahue” (remember him?) to announce yet another End of Western Civ, but because the kids who flocked to see and rent them grew up and got bored. Then Scream came along, and you know how that tune plays out.
One of the more egregious entries in the now-waning current cycle was 1998’s Urban Legends, which featured a bunch of college students (and some of their pets, too) getting offed in imaginative ways by a parka-hooded killer taking inspiration from contemporary mythology. Though it cost less to produce than the typical California murder trial, its distributors had the good sense to release it a few weeks before Halloween, earning them back three or four times its budget. So would there be a sequel? Can a bear swim?
This iteration has no connection with the original other than a cursory reappearance by Loretta Devine as campus security guard Reese, now lackadaisically watching over the students of a Northeastern film school where the annual Hitchcock Scholarship Award is being fiercely contested. And as one of my favorite characters from the animated feature Heavy Metal was wont to say, “you die, the girl dies, everybody dies.” There are episodes of decapitation, evisceration, strangulation, and electrocation (yeah, I know that’s misspelled, but work with me), as well as gratuitous use of twins, dreams, and a Gina Gershon lookalike. The killer wears a fencing mask that makes him look more like a giant microphone than a maniac as he menaces a crowd of no-name actors (although you might recognize grown-up “Gimme a Break” star Joey Lawrence).
Final Cut humorlessly recycles almost every horror and suspense cliche in the book, earning a few points only for a funny line about George Lucas, a neat sight gag involving non-functioning prop-guns, and a slightly grin-getting end title sequence. It tries, like Scream, to draw some energy from lampooning horror movies, or more accurately horror moviemakers (first-time director John Ottman has served as composer, editor, producer, or sound editor on several projects for other directors, giving him ample insight to the material), but most of the people who would get the behind-the-camera in-jokes care too much about the medium to waste time seeing this. Worst of all, it earns a whopping 18 on the Richter Sequel Scale; two of its writers worked on Hellraiser 5, Devine was in Parent Trap 3, and Gershon clone (right down to the facial mole and Bound lesbianism) Eva Mendez did Children of the Corn 5.
Say – did you ever hear the urban legend about the horror movie director who ignores a strange sound in his house during the night, then wakes up the next morning to find someone has broken in and shred all his scripts in the Cuisinart? D
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