Are they really just stories? (Urban Legend (DVD))

Member Name: linzeelou

Product:	Urban Legend (DVD)
Date:	01/09/09 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Joshua Jackson

Disadvantages: Plot wasn't fantastic

Urban Legend is a horror film that was released in 1998. The film is rated 18 due to lots of horror, blood and strong language and it is 95 minutes long. Urban Legend only had a budget of $14 million but went on to make over $72 million worldwide, making it a financial success, even though it received bad reviews.

Plot
At the beginning of the film, we meet Michelle Mancini. She's driving along and realises that she's nearly out of petrol and stops to get some. The station attendant takes Michelle's card but soon comes back to tell her that there is some kind of problem and she needs to go into the office to sort it out. The attendant is very wierd and creepy looking and when Michelle hears the dead tone on the phone, she soon gets scared and runs back to her car, not knowing what is waitng for her.

Then we meet the main cast. A group of friends at Pendleton College are sat around listening to Parker tell them about an old urban legend about one of the campus halls. No one really takes any great notice of the story, as they all think that urban legends are just stories. The next day Natalie and Brenda attend a class all about urban legends and later that day, the campus learn of Michelle's death. While the students still believe that these stories are only myths, the friends are being killed off one by one by what they thought were only urban legends.

Cast
Joshua Jackson - Damon
Robert England - Professor William Wexler
Danielle Harris - Tosh
Jared Leto - Paul
Alicia Witt - Natalie
Rebecca Gayheart - Brenda
Tara Reid - Sasha
Natasha Gregson Wagner - Michelle
Michael Rosenbaum - Parker

Special Features
- Filmographies
- Trailer
- Behind the scenes
- Filmmakers commentary

My Opinion
Urban Legend was released around the same time as Scream and was part of a run of teen slasher films. I was a big fan of these films at the time but Urban Legend didn't seem to have the same impact as Scream or I know what you did last summer, not that it was an exceptionally bad film.

I thought this film was going to be really interesting because of the urban legend plot but while some of the stories were good, they were overdone and there was far too many in a film that is only an hour and half long. The film would have been a lot better for me if they had used some of the more shocking urban legends or spent more time on the build up of the ones used.

Some of the urban legends used in the film are:
- Killer in the backseat
- Bloody Mary
- The Kidney Heist
- Drying a wet dog in the microwave
- Boyfriend's dead body hanging from a tree while his girlfriend is waiting in the car

How Alicia Witt managed to get nominated for awards for her performance in this film is totally beyond me. I thought she was awful. She came across as whiney and annoying the whole way through the film and I was hoping she would be killed off so it's a shame she was the main character.

I only really liked two of the actors in this film and the rest of the cast were extremely forgettable. Rebecca Gayheart wasn't fantastic but she had something about her which made her very bitchy and conniving and that was what made her far more interesting than any of the other characters. I love Joshua Jackson in anything he is in, and that is mainly why I liked him in this film. He's fantastic as the cheeky/ mischievous guy but during the late 90's, he seemed to play the same kind of character all of the time which lets him down a little bit.

The plot is pretty predictable and fails in the originality department but it was quite entertainment at times. Some of the scenes are a bit creepy and I did jump a few times but there is nothing exceptionally scary about Urban Legend. I was hoping for something amazing with this film but I was quite let down. The plot showed a lot of promise but it just didn't live up to my expectations.

Summary: 3 stars for the amazingly bad acting