URBAN LEGEND (1998)
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Jamie Banks
Written by: Silvio Horta
Starring: Alicia Witt, Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart, Robert Englund
Ingredients: College kids, mysterious murders, urban legends
Synopsis: The plot of URBAN LEGEND revolves around Natalie (Alicia Witt), a Pendleton College girl who discovers that everyone associated with her is being killed off. The catch is that they're dying in accordance with the plots of popular urban folk tales such as the story of the ax murderer hiding in the back seat. Just like in SCREAM, Natalie's young peers are familiar with these folk tales, so they know how death might possibly occur.
Police never show up, and attractive college kids wander around and run off to be alone in dark places where a villain who wears a hooded winter parka in warm weather stalks them. People always run the wrong way straight into danger. Evidence and bodies disappear, and in the end, as tradition dictates, the villain is revealed to be someone who can't possibly do all that lifting, clean up all that evidence, and survive so many bullet wounds.
Opinion: Urban legends are fictional modern folk tales passed off as true. A couple examples are: the cat in the microwave; alligators hiding in the sewers; a famous actor (you know his name) going to the hospital with a gerbil in his intestine; feeding alka seltzer tablets to seagulls to make them explode; seeing a girl walking down the street and finding out later she died years ago; the kid who gets his pecker chopped off in the bathroom; the choking Doberman; et cetera, et cetera.
URBAN LEGEND features some of these, but I haven't heard of some of the others. It's a somewhat campy movie that's not really suspenseful. But at least we get to see who lives, who dies, and who the villain in the winter parka turns out to be.
Reviewed by David Sunga September 26, 1998 http://www.criticzoo.com
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