Urban Legend (1998)

Following a series of strange murders, a group of students at a college campus set out to investigate the crimes and their seeming connection to the killer when they find out the killer is basing their crimes on urban legends and set out to stop the rampage. This is far better than its reputation would have it. Among the better features here is the fact that back when this movie came out the gimmick of using the deaths based on urban legends allowed for some pretty inventive and original kills. The opening backseat driver decapitation is a great one to open a film on, the dead boyfriend suspended over a fleeing car in the woods offers some rather nice suspense with the killer appearing and continually trying to break into the car and the sex/strangulation misidentification is really cool mainly because the circumstances needed to make it true, from the back-story needed to make sure she shouldn't see anything, the killer gaining access to the room without violent means, and the actual sounds of the incident, are all mixed together and makes a marvelous scene. These here really work nicely due to the way they incorporate the whole mythology of the premise into their stalking and work incredibly well at bringing these together. Other great scenes, where she watches someone in the killers known attire stalk one of her friends in a swimming pool while she is helplessly trying to get her attention or the tense stalking of the DJ in the radio station during the thunderstorm make for some additional tense, thrilling scenes, and the way it works out due to knowing what the killer is dressed like is effective enough. That also leads into the twist about the identity of the killer and how their secret is kept, as the way there are so many different red herrings involved and all of them given good alibis to clear them, so by gaining more clues to their identity, it broadens the suspense by making an extra clue for the people to solve. These here really work nicely for the film as there isn’t a whole lot really to dislike here. The main problem with this film is that it was aimed for the masses to consume, so it has a lot of toned-down gore. Many of these killings should've been gorier, and it will probably disappoint many out there looking for a good gory slasher film. It also falls into the realm of those films where they're trying to poke fun of the genre at the same time as trying to scare, and here is one example that having a ton of cheap scares aren't that frightening. What makes it worse is that many of the jokes aren't funny, so it is a bit flat in some places. The pacing is a little off in the first half with all the build-ups to the class and what they all mean, but there’s not a whole lot else wrong here. Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, some alcohol use, a scene with a dog drinking and a brief mild sex scene.