Urban Legends

As Seen On TV

Scream was a good film. I'm not a great fan of the horror genre, but even I could tell this was a well made movie, that drew upon the well of its predecessors but was also something new. The knowing self-reference was particularly enjoyable, and there were plenty of chills and spills to relish. The only drawback it had was as inspiration for the return of the teen slasher flick, of which Urban Legends is one. It so badly wants to be Scream, it's embarrassing.

Mimicking the opening of Scream, where a pretty young girl gets killed in the opening few minutes, it then goes onto ape the seeming youth awareness of urban legends, modern folklore that is passed off as truth (my favourite being the baby sitter who microwaved the baby to dry it off). We have young, pretty faces that we recognise from elsewhere (Alicia Witt is from TV's Cybill, Joshua Jackson from Dawson Creek, Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville) as well as Jared Leto, paying dues before Fight Club and Requiem for a Dream, and Tara Reid, the prettiest actress in the world who can't act to save her life, and the game begins of who is going to be next victim.

The serial killer kills people according to urban legends, even if some of the methods sound like they have been invented for the film. Like Scream, they try to throw in back story for the purposes of motive, and red herrings are dropped as to who the killer is, even though it's fairly obvious, and the killer reveals everything at the end, even as they act crazy as the reason for it all. Witt, the nominal heroine, who always looked like she was going to corpse as she made her acerbic asides in Cybill, again seems to not bother with acting in this, as she doesn't seem scared or believable, but who cares when she's thin and pretty? The logic and plausibility is stretched to the seams, and the reasons for killing everyone else apart from the heroine are particularly limp and pointless.

Apart from the in-joke of Jackson turning off his radio in disgust when he hears the opening lines from the theme tune to Dawson's Creek, there isn't much humour to divert, and there isn't much young flesh on display either, unlike the slashers of old, so all that's left is an ordinary horror with the one hook being, "Look, they're all urban legends! Aren't we modern and knowing?" and not much else. Hopefully, the film will pass into urban legend for the actors involved.

Rating: DA