URBAN LEGEND
** (out of 4) - a fair movie
Release Date: September 25, 1998 Starring: Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Jared Leto, Loretta Devine, Joshua Jackson, Tara Reid, Michale Rosenbaum, John Neville, Robert Englund Directed by: Jamie Blanks Distributed by: Sony Pictures Entertainment / TriStar Pictures MPAA Rating: R (horror violence/gore, language, sexual content) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1998/urban.htm
As the slasher/horror-genre revival takes the film world by storm, filmmakers are gravitating toward the quantity-over-quality maxim. Along with earlier-this-year's DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, the latest entry into the neo-category is a quickly-crafted mix of script, character, and atmosphere. In directing her debut feature, Jamie Blanks attempts to take URBAN LEGEND down a path that hasn't been done before. The title shows it - she's going to make use of those pop campfire scare stories - but in the process of trying to fit everything in she falls back on cliché and gimmick to the point where it reflects badly on other films of the type.
Granted, the urban legends make things interesting intially, but for the most part this is simply novelty. Everyone knows most of these stories by one version or another, and the popularity is undeniable, but by the end they're just a tired gimmick. Even that might work, but in order to substantiate this, the script calls upon recent trademarks. How many people in the same small town have the same fur-lined parka (a la the raincoat in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER)? Or who brought the gun into the final scene so that the killer could get offed at least three times a la SCREAM? And that escape route by foot through the woods - why, that wouldn't be from DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, would it? The bottom line is that everything included here is definitely not of orginal make or model.
The center of the cast is a group of four or five teens we've all seen before. Alicia Witt (TV's CYBILL) is no different from the Jennifer Love Hewitts and Neve Campbells of Gen-X fame, and she does all right - minus a bit of inspiration. Her college student world is rocked one night when news of the gruesome death of a friend reaches campus. Suddenly other friends start turning up dead (Joshua Jackson, Danielle Harris), and all suffer death in the same fashion as one of the urban legends. The cast is narrowed down to only the smart and the quick, and, of course, they have their fallings-out and childish moments of paranoia. Nothing we haven't seen, but not to worry - it won't be long before the killer strikes again. Thus the plot.
The only reason we don't confuse this with parody is because Jamie Blanks makes to spice up her movie with murders grotesque and graphic to the extreme. URBAN LEGEND is perhaps the first movie to enter the no-holds-barred arena of slasher movies, and the only purpose it serves is to turn the audience against the killer. After a string of nine or ten gruesome deaths, the audience cares more about how the killer will die rather than who he actually is. And in this case, when the impossible identity is revealed, no one bats an eye - which could lead one to believe that Blanks was counting on the ignorance of her audience. Most of URBAN LEGEND follows in suit: a typical 90's horror movie. And though the crowds will flock to the theaters on opening weekend, you don't have to be among them.
-- Craig Roush kinnopio@execpc.com -- Kinnopio's Movie Reviews http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio
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