The Big Picture
Urban Legends attempts to copy Scream but falls short, lacking in satirical sharpness. The killers in Urban Legends wear similar versions of the costumes in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Urban Legends closely replicates the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer but lacks originality.
1996 and 1997 were two big years for slasher films. Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, both written by Kevin Williamson, are credited with reviving the genre. Scream lampooned horror films and was popular with both critics and audiences, while I Know What You Did Last Summer received poor reviews from critics but did well at the box office, signaling continued interest in slasher films. However, not all slasher films that tried to follow in these films’ footsteps were successful.
One of the worst was 1998’s “Urban Legend,” starring “Long Legs” star Alicia Witt alongside Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe. In “Urban Legend,” Witt plays a college student terrorized by a killer who reenacts urban legends (alongside up-and-coming stars like Jared Leto and Joshua Jackson). The cast is fun to watch (especially Rebecca Gayheart) and the premise is intriguing, but “Urban Legend” never quite packs the punch of its predecessor, no matter how much material it borrows from it.
Urban Legend (1998)
Urban Legend is a slasher film set at a New England college where students are being killed in ways that mimic famous urban legends. College student Natalie suspects the murders are somehow connected and sets out to uncover the truth. As the death toll rises, she and her friends must confront the terrifying reality that someone is using these legends as blueprints for murder.
Release date: September 25, 1998
Director: Jamie Blanks
Duration: 99 minutes
Author Silvio Horta
Expanding
The killer in “Urban Legend” has the same obsession as the killer in “Scream”
In Scream, everyone is always talking about horror movies. That’s part of its appeal as a horror movie. The killer in particular loves horror movies, he questions his victims about them before he kills them, and generally plays on horror tropes. This works because the characters directly comment on and mock horror movie cliches in the middle of horror movies.
Related: In the same year as Scream, Neve Campbell played a witch in this cheesy horror gem
Campbell faced some supernatural trouble before going head-to-head with Ghostface.
Urban Legends tries to emulate this obsession angle by focusing on, you guessed it, urban legends; stories that permeate nearly every community in America, like the classic tale of a babysitter who gets threatening phone calls from inside the house while watching over children. Some of these stories have been the focus of their own horror movies; the babysitter story in particular may be the most famous example, inspiring 1979’s When a Stranger Calls, which then spawned a sequel in the ’90s and a remake of the same name in the 2000s. This kind of hook isn’t terrible, to be honest; the filmmakers are taking a story that many of us are familiar with and making it “real.” But it doesn’t have the satirical edge of something like Scream. Strip that away, and all you’re left with is a few so-so murder scenes and a mundane story that’s been told many times before.
The killer in “Urban Legend” is dressed similarly to the killer in “What Did You Do Last Summer?”
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures
In both I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream, the killer wears a distinctive costume. Of course, this is not uncommon in horror movies, but it’s usually wise to choose a more eye-catching costume. Unfortunately, Urban Legend uses a less impressive version of the raincoat and hook worn by the killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer: a winter parka and an axe.
Not only is the film too similar to I Know What You Did Last Summer, it also makes absolutely no sense thematically. An axe is a common murder weapon that can stand in for many urban legends, but the hoodie has absolutely no connection to those stories. For some reason, multiple characters wear the exact same style of hoodie, even though the film isn’t set in winter. It’s a laughably lazy attempt to add misleading elements to the story.
The story of “Urban Legend” is similar to “What Did You Do Last Summer?”
Although many critics compared Urban Legend to Scream at the time of its release and gave it unfavorable reviews, the film’s plot is actually quite close to the original I Know What You Did Last Summer. Not only does it feature a similar villain, but the motive for the murders is also largely the same. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, the killer seeks revenge on the college students who killed him in a hit-and-run. There is also a subplot in which the killer murders the daughter’s boyfriend, who was responsible for the daughter’s death in a separate car accident.
In Urban Legend, the killer seeks revenge on a duo of college students, and just like in Last Summer You Did, they cause a car accident that kills the killer’s boyfriend. Some of the roles are switched around, but the general plot is the same in both films. There’s even a plot twist jump scare at the end that reveals the killer is still alive. Considering it was released just one year after Last Summer You Did, Urban Legend feels completely unoriginal.
The cast of “Urban Legend” is the best
Copycat it may be, but Urban Legend has one wild cast. Alongside Alicia Witt in the lead role, it features a cast of ’90s favorites. Jared Leto had already starred in My So Called Life and was on the verge of stardom with Requiem for a Dream. When Urban Legend came out, Joshua Jackson had also just started appearing on Dawson’s Creek, and Tara Reid was about to star in American Pie. Just two years later, Michael Rosenbaum would take on the role of Lex Luthor in Smallville.
It’s fun to see these now-famous actors at the beginning of their careers, but most of their performances are pretty average. The real standout is Rebecca Gayheart, who plays the best friend of Alicia Witt’s character. (It’s also worth noting that Gayheart also appeared in Scream 2, just a year before Urban Legend.) Gayheart transforms from a regular college girl into a wild woman in the final episode, and her over-the-top performance is truly the highlight of the movie.
Urban Legend also features two Hollywood horror legends to spice things up. Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky in the Child’s Play series, has a small but fun cameo at the beginning of the film as a seemingly scary gas station attendant. But the real star is Robert Englund, the actor under the Freddy Krueger makeup. Englund plays an American folklore professor who soon becomes the prime suspect in the urban legend murders. The horror icons and fun productions don’t stop Urban Legend from being a worse version of Scream. But it’s inventive in its use of urban legends as a horror movie hook, and goofy in places, so it’s worth a watch. With a reboot reportedly in the works, only time will tell if Urban Legend is worth a comeback in the third act.
Urban Legends is available to watch in the US on Max
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