Urban Legend (1998)
Last Watch Date - January 6, 2025
Total Times Watched - Many
Comments
Can you believe this movie came out in 1998!? For some reason I thought it was like.. I dunno, 2000 at the earliest. My memories of this were much less Scream ripoff than what I witnessed tonight. Is my memory faulty? It cannot be!!!
This movie is the odd one out of that generation because I think no one really cared all that much about it. There was no mega star holding it down (although the cast has plenty of stars to varying degrees) and the story was kind of like.. Scream? We just saw that movie done better 2 years ago. Instead of horror movies, we get urban legends. Still a twist. Still a whodunnit. But this time it's even more boring and nonsensical!
When you get down to it, none of this movie makes any sense in its own universe. They have a school dean who acts like the mayor in Jaws. THIS TOWN STAYS OPEN! Reminds me of Sleepaway Camp too. It was an accident, no need to alarm anyone! Sure there are multiple deaths and sure they're following this pattern, but that could just be a wild coincidence. Wait, is this a documentary about university administrators? I'm pretty sure this is how they'd actually act.
Somehow Jared Leto comes off creepier than ever in this movie and he's pretty creepy in real life as it is. He also kind of looks like he has shoe polish dyed hair. I'm not sure if he has black hair in real life or not, but it looks TOO black. He also looks kind of tiny. I had a girlfriend back around this time who liked him and I never really got it. Looking back on it now, I STILL don't get it. He has some sort of weird sex icon cult thing going though so what do I know.
Oh yeah, back to the movie. Like I said, this basically follows the same formula as Scream. I think that's what makes it feel longer than it actually is. It's only 100 minutes long including credits, but it felt much longer. I definitely used to recommend this one as one of the better late-90s slashers and now I regret ever doing that. I'm sorry to whoever I told to watch this, I was young and foolish.
Rebecca Gayheart looks absolutely mad when her hair is all puffed up, but also kind of like.. I get it. When I was a kid I was definitely more into Alicia Witt, but I'm not so sure I agree with my former self. After going to her wiki page – yikes.
Recommended?
No. I thought maybe if it were parodied or something it'd be cool, but I can't think of this movie ever coming up when people talk about those 90s slashers. It's not worth remembering.
