Urban Legend/Urban Legends - Final Cut 2-pack (1998)

Urban Legend
An attractive young woman is driving her car on a dark country road and singing along to the radio. She's running out of gas and so she pulls into a gas station (run by a jittery, stuttering Brad Dourif), but then flees what seems to be an attack, only to find the real threat in her backseat: a hooded killer with an ax who takes her head off with a well-aimed swing. You've heard the story before? Not surprising, given that it's one of the more famous urban legends borrowed for Urban Legend, a post-Scream exercise in self-referential horror. The students at an ivy-covered New England college are turning up dead, the victims of a serial killer who murders in the fashion of the "apocryphal" modern myths. It's all for the benefit of good girl with a dark secret Alicia Witt, the sole witness to most of the killings. Doe-eyed Rebecca Gayheart, as her gullible best friend, and Jared Leto, the ambitious campus journalist who tracks down the secret that hangs over the school, lead a cast of pretty young women, hunky guys, and campus characters, notably the suspicious professor Robert Englund, a genre legend in his own right as the star of seven Nightmare on Elm Street films. Take away the cheeky remarks and self-awareness and it's a throwback to the 1970s' rash of teen slasher movies, where sexually active teens are sliced, diced, and otherwise slaughtered in elaborate and ingenious ways. The increasingly preposterous film is no Scream, but the modestly stylish production has its moments. --Sean Axmaker

Urban Legends: Final Cut
While Urban Legends: Final Cut is not nearly as terrifying or inventive as some of its predecessors, the film does offer up a fairly suspenseful whodunit that fans of the teen horror genre will likely appreciate. Amy Mayfield, the film's heroine (played by fresh-faced Jennifer Morrison), is the daughter of an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker trying to make a name for herself at Alpine University, "the greatest film school that ever existed." Along with several other students she is competing for the coveted Hitchcock award, which virtually guarantees the winner a successful career in Hollywood. When the film school's resident genius and likely winner of the award is found dead, suspicions arise. As other film students are killed off one by one, everyone becomes a suspect. Would someone kill to win the prestigious award? While striving to be Hitchcockian in theme (as evidenced by its multiple references to the director himself), the film never quite moves beyond cliché. Many scenes are a little too reminiscent of other popular teen horror flicks like Scream (the anonymous masked killer, though not nearly as frightening), The Blair Witch Project (Amy is chased through desolate woods by her stalker), and Friday the 13th (Amy hides from the killer in a lake setting eerily similar to the one where Jason died so many years ago). These elements seem just a little worn out. Morrison gives a serviceable performance, and Loretta Devine, from the original Urban Legend, adds humor as a Foxy Brown-worshiping security guard. The film manages to keep you guessing until its conclusion, and a sequence set in an abandoned amusement park is truly creepy. But ultimately Urban Legends: Final Cut lacks the originality to make a name for itself among the many films of its genre. --Mindy Ruehmann

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URBAN LEGEND 2

What I didn't like about this movie is that all the murders weren't that good. It wasn't really scary and I already knew who the killer was from the very beggining. The thing I liked is the "disguise" of the killer. It was intresting. But what I also hated about the movie UL 2 is that they didn't continue with the characters like Natalie... March 30, 2005

Urban Legends 2: Possibly the worst movie EVER

It takes a lot to go from being just bad to being painfully inept to the point where you contemplate suicide watching the multi-level banality. Urban Legends: Final Cut made that jump. I can't remember seeing something this poorly directed, acted, written, edited, and just about every other department, in a long while.

Why do all the students at the "best film school ever!" want to make horrible teenie slasher films? Did they sit in their basements dreaming of the day they too could create Scream? My God, the idealistic youth of America just wants to make fake blooded dreck! And why then, the chosen few of the best and brightest for the "best film school ever!" are so BAD at making movies? I'll give this, the girl does draw nice storyboards but then she should have gone to art school and not "the best film school ever!"

And everyone looks like they stepped off a magazine cover including the obligatory cute lesbian, sans Joey Lawerance. You should know trouble's afoot when a Lawerance makes his way into a movie. The acting is phenomenally bad with this cast of characters that are more inclined to be found on the back of a milk carton than deliver a good line or carry a joke well.

This movie just goes from bad to horrible the longer it goes. Yes yes, it's a slasher film you're supposed to have fun with. But what fun is it watching crap you and your friends could make better and funnier in your backyard with your dad's camcorder? February 27, 2004

arguably the best horror series

these movies are pretty good. i can't wait for ul3 if they're going to make a third one. they obviously need to. August 4, 2003

Let's hope it is...

Urban Legends was a sleeper horror hit- a story of a group of friends who are terrorised by some maniac out to get them using urban legends in the goriest style imaginable.

Urban Legends 2:Final Cut is a major embarrassment to it's predecessor. It seems to be a tie between Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer. This time round, producers are making a film on the Urban Legends murders that happened a couple of years ago. All the original cast of the first film have gone apart from the funny cop (Loretta Devine)

A new set of urban legends start from a new killer and prove to be more gorier than the first. This time, the killer is preying on the cast of the Urban Legends film.
Urban Legends 2 is another guessing game which misses it's predecessors winning elements- unpredictabliity, good acting, scariness and less gore.

Despite the poor quality of the sequel, watch out for a comic ending in the very last minute of the film. You'll be very surprised and amused. You'll know what I mean! February 24, 2003

Confusing and not as good as the first

Normally, everyone hates sequels. I'm one of these people who enjoy sequels, no matter what. I like the Terminator sequel and the Scream trilogy etc. Halfway through watching this, my friend phoned, and told me off for buying it when I could have borrowed it from him, but he said he preferred the sequel to the original. After watching this film right through, I had to disagree with him (sorry!) I got too confused with it too often, when they showed the relatively scary bits as the movie the students were filming. The ending totally confused me, as it made me think was it all real, or all a "movie". I couldn't identify the people, as they weren't well enough introduced, and when I was TRYING to persuade my friend to tell me who the killer was, and he said he was in Die Hard (great, unless you haven't seen Die Hard!). All the guys looked too similar, and I still don't know which one was the killer. And for any Neighbours fans - how much does Jennifer Morrison look like Michelle Scully?! Scary!
Overall ... Sorry, I preferred the original. The first few minutes reminded me of the start of Final Destination (with the plane and mainly, the oxygen masks coming down). Not a film would particularly want to watch again, although I probably would. The extras were pretty good, especially the gag reel! February 19, 2003

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