Ever since Kevin Williamson's Scream blew onto theatre screens, the teen horror flick has been in uber-revitalization mode, with about a dozen new major theatrical releases based on the same premise, lots of 15-20 year olds getting hacked and slashed and other violent tendencies by "deranged psychos".
Our latest applicant feature a goodly few of televisiondome's young so-called talent (the current horror flick casting grounds), including that Noxema girl, Alicia Witt (from Cybill), Jared Leto (formerly of My So Called Life), and Joshua Jackson (from Dawson's Creek). And like every other in this genre, Urban Legends has a catchy twist to the killings (no, not a real hook, that's I Know What You Did Last Summer, which as painful as it was, was a much better film)... (as if you couldn't guess) the killer murders their victim by working it around some Urban Legend.
The story is basically nonexistent (duh), and the characterization is terribly weak. Even the murderer's motivation is incredibly trite. Basically, the film insult's the viewer's intelligence (well, mine at least) by making us believe that the killer actually had the good fortune, smarts, and impeccable timing to be able to instigate and execute their murders according to urban legends. The worst of all, once the killer is revealed it is never explained how they could have possibly done (physically and mentally) what was necessary to go through with thier murder pattern. And then the topper, incredibly the murderer survives to the end, the point of the final scene though, totally missed by me (why go back to the college when the people you want revenge on are no longer there?)
The film starts off wonderfully, with a creepy and and somewhat effective retelling of the UL "there's a man with an axe in the back of your car." But it falls apart immediately once the dense and horribly one dimentional lead characters are introduced. None of the actors (save Jackson who basically reprises his Dawson's Creek personality on screen) are particularly good, and not much else, be it mood, settings, visuals, score, whatever, are well done. Literally the worst new release I have seen so far this year. Urban Legends must be avoided.