Urban Legend (1998)

Movie: Urban Legend (1998), directed by Jamie Blanks

Watched on: Shudder

Ran: 8.05 miles, 9’08”/mile, 01:13:36 (long recovery run)

 

What to choose for an election night run? I mean, I suppose I couldn’t have opted for anything scarier than the election coverage itself, but I had resolved not to watch because I knew no winner would be declared on the night of, and I didn’t need the extra stress. So I went looking for a movie to watch, and I was in the mood for something familiar. After all, the last thing I wanted on election night was a big scary surprise.

 

Lucky for me, then, that Shudder had just added Urban Legend to its library! Just seeing the title bathed me in a wave of nostalgia; Urban Legend, together with The Faculty, was one of the first DVDs I ever bought. It was yet another of the late-’90s glut of teen-scream slashers spawned from the success of Scream, but this one distinguished itself with a gimmick practically custom-written for me: all the grisly murders contained within were modeled after various (duh) urban legends. Urban legends and movie horror? Get out of town! If they’d added in some skateboarding, a punk band, and a Buffy cast member or three, it might have been my favoritest movie ever.

 

Instead, Urban Legend is a pretty but flawed little gem regrettably devoid of punk, skateboarding, or anyone moonlighting from the Scooby Gang, but that’s not to say the cast doesn’t boast a stellar list of ’90s teen-heartthrob talent. We’ve got Tara “American Pie” Reid! Jared “Worst Joker” Leto! Joshua “Dawson’s Pacey” Jackson! Even Rebecca “Noxzema Girl” Gayheart! And that’s not all: horror fans will also appreciate Robert “Freddy” Englund as the enigmatic and ominous Professor Wexler, and the inimitable Brad “Chucky” Dourif in an uncredited appearance as the stuttering gas station attendant.

 

The star of the show, however, is Alicia “Cybill’s… Daughter, I Guess? I Never Saw That Show” Witt as Natalie, a student at New Hampshire’s Pendleton University. It was a simpler time; a time when college kids had pagers instead of cell phones, you could (should the need arise) track down a killer by looking at who had last signed the little check-out card in the back of a library book, and your manic depressive roommate found her campus hookups by hogging your dorm room’s landline to dial in to the Goth 4 Goth message boards. Unfortunately, there’s a ripple of unease in this idyllic oasis of academia, because people have suddenly started going missing and/or dead.

 

The kicker is that the action seems strangely centered on Natalie, as again and again she sees her fellow students lured into scenarios mirroring those of famous urban legends before they’re killed by a live-action version of Kenny from South Park. Seriously, the killer is wearing a parka with the hood up, so you get the same plot contrivance as in the previous year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer with the rain slickers: Natalie can’t spot the real killer, because everybody wears the same winter parka. Have I mentioned that it’s not winter? Eh, whatever.

 

Anyway, Natalie gets the feeling that Axe-Wielding Kenny is somehow related to a shocking secret from her bad-girl past—but maybe it’s just Professor Wexler instead, who teaches a class on urban folklore and has an unrelated shocking secret of his own. Or is her imagination running away with her? Perhaps Damon didn’t die in front of her eyes and is just playing a prank on her for rejecting his advances. Maybe her roommate did commit suicide by slashing her wrists in bed, somehow writing a clear sentence on the wall in her own blood before dying (which wouldn’t explain her strangulation bruises, but sssshhhh, we’re not talking about that). Does it all have anything to do with the anniversary of a dorm massacre that no one will acknowledge ever happened?

 

If you’re getting the sense that Urban Legend features a convoluted, nonsensical plot, you’re not wrong. I don’t want to go into detail here, but as intriguing as the idea of urban legend-themed murders might be, the way they come off in the movie would make them impossible to plan and execute with any level of confidence. Heck, literally the first murder that starts off the movie could only have happened the way it did by accident—and without the unplannable occurrence, it wouldn’t have matched an urban legend at all.

 

What I’m saying is that Urban Legend’s plot has enough holes to serve as a decent makeshift colander, and unless you’re making spaghetti and have woefully underprepared, that’s a shortcoming, to be sure. But for me, anyway, the story is engaging enough that I can just sort of surf its dream logic; everything seems to make enough sense until I wake up and start thinking about it. Even so, it feels about 10 minutes too long, and it was made in the late ’90s so you better BELIEVE there’s a sassy Black security guard. But what can I say? When the credits roll, I always feel I had a good time.

 

I dunno, maybe it’s just because my own higher-education career was so woefully devoid of urban legend-themed murders. I probably should have gone to a liberal arts college.