Urban Legend Rated: R (for bloody violence and college talk) Reviewed by Fox Davidson
Bing, bang boom! Scream, whimper, cry! Sudden noise, impending doom, turn around, it's only your friend, the practical joker. This could be the premises for the new-to-video Urban Legend, a random Scream impersonator that is strikingly nice to look at, but not very stimulating to talk about. The film, director by new comer Jamie Blanks, stars Alicia Witt (my pick for the best leading female in a horror film since Neve Campbell) as the ominous Scream Queen, ready to scream her lungs out, as she does quite often. When a young women is murdered not far from the college where she attends, she, along with the snotty school paper reporter Jared Letto and her dumb-as-doornails friends (one a predictable victim for the masked slasher, she is the host of a college radio talk show dedicated to sex - what a surprise!), form the idea that the killer is killing in the forms of urban legends. Urban Legend is so clearly a bluntant rip-off of Wes Craven, that I couldn't help but think about Scream (and its superior sequel) while watching this film. Various shots in the new film almost copy the ones in Scream, that Legend's major drawing point is, also, its draw back, lacking any sense of originality, so even when the killer is identified, it is SO original, it was just silly. I did, however, like the way Blanks filmed the chase scenes. One of these sequences features a breathtaking fall and several close-calls with a swinging ax. We haven't seen an ax as the main weapon in a horror film since the Friday the 13th movies. There are also other choices of maiming, such as hanging with a rope, and car smashing. Urban Legend is much better than Disturbing Behavior (the lackluster anti-Stepford Wives with Dawson's Creek It Girl Katie Holmes), but, lacks the recent Halloween: H2O's depth and frightning stalk-and-dice theme. The DVD of Legend is very good. It contains the original theatrical trailer, cast bios, and an interesting Behind-the-Scenes featurette, which was more fun than the actual movie.
Film: ** Disc: **** Wrote on 3-22-99
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