Movie Review: Urban Legend (1998)

A slasher movie based around popular urban legends is indeed an intriguing premise. The opening scene, depicting the man in the backseat of a young woman’s car (and a creepy Brad Dourif), is really well done and effectively creepy.

This movie is filled with cameos/performances of various horror icons— not just Dourif, but Danielle Harris and Robert Englund as well. That’s nice.

Englund plays a professor who lectures on urban legends, and he provides all the exposition you need. If for whatever reason, you weren’t familiar with some of these stories, he fills you in.

Danielle Harris plays the lead girls’ edgy roommate, which is pretty much the role she was born to play.

The characters definitely feel like Scream knockoffs. Paul Gardner (Jared Leto) is an overconfident school journalist, Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt) is a woman dealing with some some stuff from her past (not to the extent that Sidney is, but whatever), and Damon Brooks (Joshua Jackson) is a prankster that doesn’t take anything seriously.

It’s pretty unoriginal all around. The performances aren’t half bad, though. They may not elevate the movie, but they don’t really hurt it in any way.

What does hurt it is the obnoxious amount of false jump scares. They’re kind of justifiable, though incredibly predictable, when the prankster is doing his thing. But they happen everywhere.

The death scenes are pretty creative, but they’re often times edited very poorly. A lot of quick cuts and not all the shots match.

The urban legend stuff is kind of fun, but the movie probably could have gone further into this territory, so as to feel a bit less generic. The characters really drag the movie down. Not just because they’re unoriginal, but there’s really nothing to it. There’s a love triangle that comes out of nowhere, and it just sucks.

Rating: 4/10