A while back I stumbled across the Pandora station "90's on Shuffle Radio" and I started feeling nostalgic. I feel that decade is slept on. It didn't have the political upheaval of the 60s and 70s, the wackiness of the 80s or the fallout we've been in since post 9/11. In my opinion, the music is better than it gets credit for. I was born in the late 80s, so the 90s were most of my childhood as a functioning human, so maybe it's looking at everything with rose-colored glasses but there were a lot of good. It also saw the rebirth of the slasher movie and multiple copycats like...
Urban Legend (1998)
Before I get into the movie itself, the first thing that jumped out to me when watching was the cast. They went all out with this. It has horror icons Robert Englund playing a creepy professor, Brad Dourif as the gas station worker red herring, Danielle Harris playing the angry, goth roommate, plus other stars like Jared Leto as the overly enthusiastic newspaper reporter student, Loretta Devine as a cop who I'm going to pretend is Hooks from Police Academy after leaving that department, Tara Reid as the sultry radio host and Julian Richings playing a janitor, you may recognize him as Death from "Supernatural" or the main baddie from the Wrong Turn series. That's a fantastic cast even if they don't have too much to work with.
OK, let's talk about the movie. A killer is going around a college campus killing off students based on urban legends. It's a cool premise for the movie and some of the deaths are highlights, even if the violence is toned down. We don't get really to see a lot of the deaths one way or another, but there is an effective one. Earlier, the movie talks about the legend that if you eat pop rocks and pop, your body will explode. For this, the baddie sticks a funnel into a dude's mouth, dumps the candy down it and then fills it with drano. That is brutal and makes me shiver just thinking about it.
While the idea of highlighting urban legends is interesting, a lot of times it feels like you've already seen the movie. The characters and their dynamics are very similar to how they were in Scream. The biggest differences between them and how they interact are the order of the deaths and who ends up being the killer. There are even set pieces that are very similar to what you've already seen.
I think my favorite thing about this movie is Jared Leto's character Paul. He plays a student on the college newspaper and it's so funny how seriously he takes that paper and the silly power struggle side story between him and the dean. There's a side plot where the dean of the college is trying to suppress the story because he's worried about bad press for the school. It's so over the top that you can't help but laugh at how both Jared Leto and the old dean puff out their chests about journalistic integrity and student safety. It's also funny how much things have changed. This was 1998 and like 15 years later newspapers started dying across the country. While I'm on the topic of news media, to this movie's credit, it does have a TV reporter delivering a standup, and thank the Lord, it looks and sounds like a legitimate report. Upon going through IMDB, I found out that's because they used an actual reporter for the scene. Imagine that!
I'm going to touch on a few things I liked before I get into my biggest issue. I liked the first kill. I enjoyed how Brad Douriff came so close to saving her, but his speech impediment made him come across as scarier than he would have liked. Then as she's driving she's listening to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and right when Bonnie Tyler gets to, "Turn around bright eyes," the killer pops up in the backseat with an ax. Another mark in the movie's favor is that it never seems to drag. There's always something going on that's interesting; a new clue, a person acting shady, a scare or a death. While it doesn't move at breakneck speed, something is usually happening to prevent you from wandering.
Still, there are a bunch of misfires. For one, there is no way the actor who plays Parker could pass as a college student. I get that almost the entire cast is in their late 20s, but he looks mid-30s at best. That's just a nitpick, my biggest gripe is the killer. I don't mind who they went with, and her motive isn't bad, but it breaks the immersion. In this one, there's only one killer and *Spoiler Alert*... she isn't all that imposing. It's the best friend and picking her as the baddie makes it hard to take the movie seriously. There's simply no way a woman of her size could have done all the things she did and moved the bodies to where they needed to be to make everything happen. There are people twice her size she's lugging up flights of stairs and stringing them up or dumping into the trunk of her car. She also has Arya Stark levels of plot armor to be able to take the damage she got and bounce back. Thinking about it for just a second makes it hard to suspend your disbelief.
Before I move on, I want to talk about the dean's death. It is easily the goofiest in the entire movie. The baddie slashes his Achilles tendon and then turns the car on and lets it coast over him. The dean tries to get away from the car by crawling forward, never once trying to move out of the way of the car. That was Halloween Kills's level of bad.
I want to talk about the very end for a minute because it's clever. After the baddie is seemingly killed off, the movie fades out to another group of old college students, one of them looking to be at least 40, telling the stories about the murders that happened. No one believes him, they call it an urban legend and he counters by saying the school covered it up. While they're laughing at him he asks if anyone believes him. A woman raises her hand and says she does. The camera turns, and it's the killer wearing a small scarf like another urban legend. But she tells him he got it wrong and says she's going to tell the real story.
I like that a lot. It fits with the theme of the movie and during her bad guy monologue, she says that she was going to get away with the murders because it would just turn into an urban legend. It goes a long way to explain why the story didn't get out. There's no way they'd be able to cover up staff, students and the dean getting murdered. Plus, a cop who was shot witnessed the baddie's final speech. Because the movie is about some kid retelling a story told to him, we have an unreliable narrator. I'm able to forgive a lot more of the goofiness because we have no idea what happened because it's a story from a guy who heard it from a guy. Of course, the sequel went ahead and poured cold water on that, but it's not like I'm ever to watch that one.
6.5 Dr. Chainsaws!
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