Urban Legend is probably one of my favourites from the 1990’s slasher era, not only coming from one of the biggest studios in the world (Sony Pictures, under Columbia TriStar) but also featuring an amazing cast of young and iconic actors. Urban Legend is a must on all Halloween watch lists.
The all-star cast includes Jared Leto (Dallas Byers Club, Suicide Squad) Tara Reid (Cruel Intentions, American Pie series), Alicia Witt (Friday Night Lights TV series), Joshua Jackson (Dawsons Creek, Fringe), Rebecca Gayhart (Scream 2, Jawbreaker) and featuring Danielle Harris (Halloween (remake) and hatchet series) and the iconic Robert Englund (A Nightmare On Elm street).
When a college campus is plagued by a serial killer copycatting events from a massacre that occurred many years previous, a young college student and her Journalist friend try and piece together who and why this is happening. Their friends are being picked off one by one in very unusual ways. The killer is using urban legends to college students off. They have to figure out who is doing these horrific killings before they also become the next Urban legend.
Urban Legend came off the back of the monster hit Scream from 1996. This film brought back the  slasher genre for the generation. Making the genre slicker and e modern also making fun of the genre while being a slasher film. Man 0’s slasher films attempted this, the film such as 1986’s April fools day but as at that time the slasher genre was roaring at the box office this type of slasher was misunderstood.
The Urban legend was one of my personal favourites of the 90’s bunch – given, fo course I did not see it until many years later as I was about 6 years old when the film was released. The film still managed to grab the attention of the audiences f today.
I totally love this film and I think once again that it is one fo the bet of the bunch. It isn’t very gory but its daring in its slick dialogue and hot on the trends of the time. It was a very daring film being one of the first slashers to really talk about real teenage issues such as sex and suicide, of course, films have discussed themes like this before (1988’s Heathers for example) .
The thing about this film that, for me stuck out the most was she fact that it was such an awesome film and was very cool in hot progressive it was but still managed to have that 80’s vibe to it. I also loved the wy the film used a lot of humour and sarcasm to touch on issues within and without the film. It was in many ways trying to be the next scream but this nothing wrong why that.
Overall I think this si a must watch in the Halloween month. If you are going to watch any of the 90’s slashers this is the one to wich in my opinion.
Urban legend is the hot point (after Scream) of the 90’s slasher movement.
|Ross Wilcock
Horror | USA, 1998 | 15 | Dir.Jamie Blanks | Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Tara Reid, Robert Englund, Danielle Harris
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