Post-Modern Murders 03: Urban Legend (1998)

I know that the UK banned a lot of horror movies in the 70s and 80s so there are probably a lot of Brits with really low standards in regards to the genre. That said, I hope whoever wrote that box line was not only fired from The Sun but fired into the sun.

Horror movies need to give you a character the audience can relate to or latch on to in some way. For even the most base slasher movie or torture porn flick to work the viewer must care about someone. Anyone. We want Jamie Lee Curtis to survive Halloween¹ because Laurie Strode seems relatable and likable. "Girl Next Door" is often a cliche used to evoke the just as cliched "Final Girl" because we recognize that person as our friend, lover, sister or even babysitter. Hell, with a clever pen the villain of the film can serve as the audience surrogate, dispatching bands of intolerable shits in creative ways. Without connection there is no pathos, and what we're left with are simply gore effects used on expendable meat.

1. Or Terror Train. Or Prom Night.

Sometimes, as in the case of Urban Legend, we're not even lucky enough to get some neat gore effects for our eyes to glaze over to. I mentioned previously that the worst sins a film can commit are being forgettable or being boring. I Know What You Did Last Summer was boring, but I remember how boring it was and why it was boring. A week removed from screening Urban Legend and I don't remember a whole hell of a lot without looking at my notes.

But this film was never meant to be sold on characters.² No, everything meant to sell tickets to teens is in the title. The phrase "urban legend" is enough to evoke some unsettling imagery, embedded in your brains at youth around campfires and at sleepovers. The hooked killer/escaped mental patient/both on Lovers' Lane, alligators in the NYC sewers, missing kidneys and there being two Ultimate Warriors.³

2. Maybe on actors though, I don't know how many of the now recognizable cast were famous at the time.
3. There was, in fact, only one Ultimate Warrior. Many people probably confuse Warrior with "Texas Tornado" Kerry von Erich or WCW's Warrior rip-off, Renegade, both of whom passed during their respective careers.

The phrase was all the promotion the film needed, and the screenwriters must have assumed that the pre-conceived notions of the audience would conjure a plot where one didn't exist. Urban Legend isn't merely half-baked, it's a plate of leftovers that was set for ten seconds in the microwave instead of ten minutes. It is the standout example of everything that went wrong with post-Scream slashers chemically composed into a 100-minute pill which is not meant to be taken orally.

Someone is killing the pretty people at [Prestigious Northeastern Liberal Arts College] using the various means and methods described in urban legends. This film's pre-credits death comes via the one about the axe-wielding psycho in the backseat. Our killer, protected from the elements by an oversized winter parka pops up in silhouette. An axe swings, the camera quick cuts and first blood is drawn (offscreen). We’re introduced to our cast of assholes who set up the plot of the film. There's not a single likable character in the bunch. The dickheads (two in this movie, Joshua Jackson and Michael Rosenbaum) are neither so vile you want them to die nor are they laughably evil; the "slutty blonde" (Tara Reid) is only in about three scenes⁴; the best friend (Rebecca Gayheart) is equal parts vapid and unbearably bubbly; Jared Leto is there so that 15 years later you can say, "Wait, Jared Leto is in this?" Final Girl (Alicia Witt⁵) drifts from scene to scene with no characterization while plot happens in her general direction. I think, at times, she reacts to some of these things, but it's difficult to tell.

4. She plays a campus radio host who gives really bad sex advice. Her only other scene is in a library which is kind of hilarious if you think about it.

5. I spent the entire movie thinking Alicia Witt was actually Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose. However, I doubt that would have changed much in regards to quality.

There’s an old urban legend about a vicious murder that took place in the abandoned dorm hall on campus and every year there's a party to commemorate this thing that maybe happened. All of the main players are in a folklore class taught by creepy professor Robert Englund. Yep, Freddy himself shows up as an obvious red herring. More urban legends are thrown about that definitely won’t be used as poorly shot horror set pieces over the next 80 minutes. The murders are timed out fairly regularly and peppered with characters walking backwards into somebody else paired with a musical stinger. Alicia Witt and Jared Leto stomp around and try to get to the root of the mystery, as if I didn't have enough shit-ass detective work last time around. Turns out people were actually murdered at the college in the mid-70s leaving only one survivor — Robert Englund’s professor. Which, while not being a “Fuck You, Movie” moment, dips dangerously close when you think about it for more than a second. The murders of 25 people is national news, especially in an era before school shootings were an every few month thing. It would be like trying to cover up Kent State.

The worst of the movie comes from the acting, especially Witt, completely unable to bring basic emotions to the table. Her response to people she knows being murdered appears to be scrunching up her face and squinting her eyes, reading less "Oh no, my friends are being murdered," and more, "Hey I'm hungry, I could maybe go for a sandwich. Maybe the dining hall is open late tonight." Leto can obviously act and Fringe showed Joshua Jackson can be quite good as well - here both appear to be on lithium. However, the prize goes to Rebecca Gayheart⁶. When she’s revealed to be the killer, she chews scenery at high speed, eyes bulging like a Roger Rabbit villain and adopting a southern accent that is neither explained nor present at any other point in the film. 

6. Prior to Urban Legend and a cameo in Scream 2, Gayheart had only appeared in Noxema commercials, for which she had apparently gained a modicum of fame. It shows. The blind, giggly optimism one has to emote for cosmetics commercials aimed at teens comes through but feels horrendously out of place. I'm aware they were probably going for this contrast to create some sort of surprise for when she's revealed as the killer but then she has to act crazy and well... The writers must have, at some point, realized that Gayheart would be unable to convince anyone of her brand of crazy or her motives, because during her reveal monologue she has a slideshow explaining it in more detail. You'd think at some point during maybe the third draft (hahaha, like this movie had drafts) it would be apparent that if you need a Powerpoint to summarize what has been going on and why then maybe something has gone very, very wrong with your plot.

As previously mentioned, the script doesn’t do anyone any favors. Just before the reveal of the killer, Leto, Gayheart and Witt escape in a car for help. While Leto goes inside a gas station to use a phone the two girls, previously vying for Leto’s attention, talk about who he’d be better with and then hug it out. This comes about a minute after Witt watched Tara Reid chopped into ground beef with an axe. When the characters don’t seem to find a serial murder too much of a threat, why should the audience? 

Most urban legends are ridiculous and far fetched to begin with, to the point where you wonder how anyone could possibly believe they ever happened in the first place. In fact, entire websites exist to investigate the facts, or lack thereof, behind the myths. Still, there’s someone, somewhere that believes that a woman used a lobster tail as a dildo and then died because the eggs in the tail hatched inside her body. I swear to you this is an actual urban legend. That sentence is the dumbest thing I have ever typed and I regularly write about movies where a zombie in a hockey mask who was once a handicapped child crushes someone’s head with his bare hands.

The utter idiocy behind that legend still doesn’t compare with how unbelievable it is that Rebecca Gayheart, all five feet of her, with a musculature that suggest she could be out-grappled by Peter Dinklage, has managed to overpower and murder several people⁷. The most ludicrous and insulting moment comes during Joshua Jackson's death. In a variant of the hook-handed serial killer at Lover’s Lane, Jackson is assaulted by the killer and hung from a tree branch. The car that Natalie is waiting in is the only thing separating him from a full hanging. We’re expected to swallow that the killer attacked Joshua Jackson, strung him from a tree and positioned him on top of a car both in total silence and within the span of about two minutes. Later, she’ll go full Voorhees and survive two bullets, a fall out a third story window onto pavement, going headfirst through a windshield and falling off of a bridge.

7. Don't get all Tatum on me. I think there's a place for lady killers. I'd have the same problem with Michael Cera being a killer in a movie where he shows Schwarzenegger-ian strength. 

Urban Legend is a bad Scream knock-off which makes it a really terrible slasher movie which makes it a fucking garbage horror film. It’s devoid of scares, poorly acted and scripted only in the loosest of terms.  It routinely thinks its smarter than it is and squanders what potential it has (and there is a good script in this idea, somewhere). In conclusion, Urban Legend is a collaborative work in the visual medium or “film,” starring “actors” who perform action and dialogue “script” written by a “screenwriter” and staged by a “director.” It exists in our reality on planet earth which is a cruel and uncaring meat grinder floating through one of infinite galaxies.

Voorhees Scale of Inhuman Feats Performed by a Human Killer: 9/10
-Repeat instances of invulnerability
-Inhuman strength
-Possible instances of teleportation
-Precognition: Knowing how characters will act and when

"Fuck you, Movie."

-Joshua Jackson starts his car and the theme from Dawson’s Creek plays, which he quickly turns off in disgust. 

-During the opening murder, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” plays on the radio as the killer pops up in the backseat. The lyric, “turn around, bright eyes” is emphasized. 

-“Oh and she was probably the girl from the Noxema commercials,” says a girl in reference to the Urban Legend the events of the story become. Fuuuuuck youuuu.

-Gayheart and Witt go to the dorm hall where the mythical murders from 25 years ago took place and begin to say “Bloody Mary” in front of it. Anyone over the age of 11 knows that’s not even how that works.

-No fewer than four people own the exact same LL Bean parka worn by the killer. The swim coach even wears it to walk around the indoor pool. 

-Michael Rosenbaum receives a taunting phone call from the killer before being murdered. Nope, totally not a Scream cash grab. Nope, nope, nope.