Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

Movie: Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000), directed by John Ottman

Watched on: Showtime

Ran: 7.44 miles, 9’27”/mile, 01:10:24 (slow recovery run)

 

So the other day I was saying to myself, “Self,” I said, “you really aren’t watching enough sequels these days.” Running Scared currently has a grand total of TWO sequels in its review list—and one of those I only watched because I didn’t know it was a sequel. Not that I have anything against sequels! They are, after all, one of our richest sources of the raw ore from which cinematic snark is refined. But it does seem weird to write about a sequel here if I haven’t already written about its original.

 

Well, good news: since I watched Urban Legend a few weeks back, I harbored no such qualms about revisiting Urban Legends: Final Cut during tonight’s pathetically slow recovery run! Yes, apparently they’d hoped to turn one of my favorite not-especially-great horror flicks into a franchise in which each mostly-standalone film would continue the theme of grisly deaths patterned after urban legends—hence this outing’s unwieldy title and sketchy connection to the storyline of the original. Indeed, the first time I saw UL:FC I was uncertain whether it even WAS a sequel until the films’ single shared character showed up ten minutes in.

 

This time around, we’re at Alpine University’s film school, where daughter-of-an-Oscar-winner Amy Mayfield is struggling to come up with a script for her thesis project, which will also be her entry for the prestigious Hitchcock Awards. (The Hitchcock is a big deal: the winner is virtually guaranteed a Hollywood career, so the competition among the seniors is fierce.) One night, Amy hitches a ride home with a security guard named Reese—yup, THAT Reese!—who tells Amy about how she’d been head of security when the urban legends killer offed all those people at Pendleton. Amy decides her Hitchcock entry will be a horror film loosely based on the Pendleton murders. So we’re watching a sequel to a movie about an urban legends killer in which they’re making a movie about an urban legends killer. Got it?

 

But all is not well on the Alpine campus; Amy’s crush Travis, a filmmaking wunderkind, has allegedly killed himself after receiving an unthinkable C- on his thesis film. And Amy’s own shoot isn’t going so great, because everyone working on it seems to vanish or die: her lead actress Sandra disappears but is captured on film in an uncharacteristically believable death scene, her cinematographer is bludgeoned to death with his own camera lens, her two visual effects wonks are electrocuted on set, etc. A mysterious figure in a fencing mask seems to be behind it all, and just to make things weirder, Travis’s identical twin Trevor is lurking around on campus secretly trying to solve what he insists must be Travis’s murder. Can Amy and Trevor crack the case before she runs out of cast and crew? Her future film prospects (and, I guess, some lives) hang in the balance.

 

(By the way, that means this is actually a sequel to a movie about an urban legends killer in which they’re trying to make a movie about an urban legends killer while being killed off by an urban legends killer. But who’s counting?)

 

I will make this plain: no matter how many times UL:FC invokes his name and work, Hitchcock it most certainly ain’t. It labors under the burden of an overly large cast, which contains too many generic white dudes to try to keep track of—and just to add insult to injury, when one of them dies off, his twin immediately pops up, like a head on a Wonder Bread hydra. Its running time of 1:37 isn’t all that hefty, and yet the movie does feel a little long; the chase scenes in particular seem to drag a bit, which is the exact opposite of what a chase scene should do. Some people might also find the plot overly complicated and/or contrived—again, twins? Really?—and the final reveal of whodunit a bit out of left field, but at least it all mostly makes sense in hindsight.

 

But a movie with delusions of Hitchcock doesn’t have to be Hitchcock to be enjoyable, and I honestly enjoyed UL:FC. Movies about making movies, like books about writing books, all too often fall into the solipsism trap and expect everyone to be fascinated by navel-gazing. UL:FC kindly spares us this fate, and its self-referential digs at lousy actors, flaky crew, and limited resources are, if anything, more entertaining than the murders. With the exception of the very well done first kill (a kidney heist and impromptu decapitation), I barely remember the deaths, but I have a clear memory of one of the effects wonks cursing out George Lucas for using CGI and then looking like he expected to be struck by lightning or something.

 

I’d say that if you liked Urban Legend at all, give UL:FC a spin. Despite a similar theme transplanted to a different school, it’s actually a very different flick. Gone, for example, is the Dawson’s Creek-style script and a cast pulling hard from the Brat Pack ‘90s Edition; the most recognizable cast member here is Joey “Whoa!” Lawrence, a decade removed from his Blossom fame, as one of the Indistinguishable White Males. And there’s something refreshing about a slasher flick that aspires to Hitchcockian qualities, even if it doesn’t necessarily hit the mark. Honestly, in some ways I feel it’s a better movie than the original, if not necessarily more enjoyable to watch. And the coda scene is worth a grin.