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Urban Legend (1998) - Are Bad Imitations Still Flattering?

 



I went a couple week period where I hardly watched any films, because sometimes that just happens, I spend my time consuming other media (some of which I am consuming for future special posts here at this blog) such as TV shows, audiobooks, 90s full-motion video game playthroughs, etc. Believe it or not, I do have competing interests with my love of B-movies. However, I am back in less than spectacular fashion to talk about my first time watching Urban Legend since I was probably a young teen catching it on a movie channel back in the digital cable days.

I wanted to like this more than I did. The dialog is where the film suffers the most, swinging for the fences for some Kevin Williamson tit-a-tat but mostly just sounding dull or purposely provocative with caveman 90s sexuality in alternating bursts. When coupled with the twist reveal of a killer I think any average viewer would have picked up on early in the film, rather quick and fairly boring kills that don’t really live up to the premise of the film, and horribly unlikable characters, I was shocked to learn that the screenwriter was the guy who ended up developing Ugly Betty for TV which I didn’t watch much personally but knew many people who were into it. It tries its best to be Scream, but if not for the fairly talented cast would be like a 90s Showtime original trying to tap into the slasher revival.

Just a quick note on the “talented cast” thing is the ostensible male lead is played by Jared Leto who is just like sleepy stonefaced throughout the film showing no emotion and even totally wooden when being a total prick. While I really, really don’t enjoy Jared Leto much as an actor or person, I will fully admit that I’ve seen him give some strong performances over the years, in some films released only a couple of years after this. However, here he is pretty terrible and out-acted by most of the less successful (later in life) cast around him.

The film is competently made, y’all know I was pretty disappointed by the very muted gore and lack of great shadowy lighting throughout in a film that is just begging for it to balance out the sort of light camp feel, but the director knows how to frame shots and I was surprised to see he never had this level of financial or critical success again. As a David Lynch head, ya know I really enjoy a rare leading performance by Alicia Witt and she’s solid as a Final Girl. The supporting cast includes solid jerkass performances by Michael Rosenbaum and Joshua Jackson (in the most unfortunate bleach job ever committed to film) who’d go on to strong careers mostly on TV, and of course I love the extended cameos by horror legends like Robert Englund, Brad Dourif, and Danielle Harris that act as a loveletter to the genre and sometimes just pop culture itself like Dourif’s stutter. The film doesn’t ever take itself too seriously, the light camp I mentioned, which keeps it a pretty breezy watch even if tonally unbalanced sometimes.

There’s a reason Urban Legend didn’t take off as much or remain centered in people’s minds as the other films of the late 90s slasher boom, it is a pale imitation of the Scream style that manages to be watchable but not frequently super entertaining beyond the frequently laughable dialog. However, it does fill me with an appreciation for Kevin Williamson’s talent at a certain type of film in the era and how hard it was for anybody else to truly replicate, and a decade from now I might throw it on again as an interesting footnote from the era.


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