URBAN LEGEND

I used to sleep under a poster of Urban Legend. In my bedroom. I wasn’t living in a Video Ezy for a period of time. It was not the only movie poster in my room. That’s important to note. Name a movie from around that era and there was a poster on my wall for it. Looking For Alibrandi. The Perfect Storm. Dick. The movie Dick. The ‘it made no impact at the time and nobody remembers it’ Dick. A friend of my dad’s owned a video store and he’d always drop off all of the excess movie posters and they went straight up on my wall, alongside classics like Dick.

The poster for Urban Legend is great and it is a genuine shame, and I mean a genuine shame, that Urban Legend is not better. I am, for some strange reason, deeply saddened by the fact this generic slasher isn’t a slightly better slasher. It’s probably because I saw the poster for it every night before bed that I am disappointed this wasn’t turned into the fun film franchise it could have been. It’s similar to how the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise fell apart, but at least the I Knows had the benefit of the ridiculous ass titles to drag it through the decades in the subconscious of the film going public.

There’s no real reason why Urban Legend shouldn’t work. It has a killer premise: a murderer is killing people using urban legends. And it has a great cast: Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, Tara Reid. The opening sequence of the axe murderer hiding in the backseat of the car is a lot of fun, but after that it all falls apart.

I think the problem with why Urban Legend doesn’t even reach the heights of fun shlock is because of the director. Jamie Blanks is an Australian dude who went to Swinburne and was offered Urban Legend because he shot a fake trailer for I Know What You Did Last Summer and the producers loved it so much that they wanted to offer him I Know but that already had a director attached, so they gave him Urban Legend. You can go find that fake trailer he made online. You can watch it. You can make up your own mind as to whether you’d give him a $14 million dollar film you’re hoping will start a franchise off the back of it. I mean, good for him, but Urban Legend is bad and maybe it’s because that was the recruitment process.

Where would I fit into Urban Legend? The reason I have such fond memories of this movie, even though it really is not good, is because of the premise. It’s so hooky. The endless supply of urban legends really captures my imagination. If I was in this movie and people started dying urban legend-style, I would end up down a Snopes rabbit hole, looking up more urban legends and definitely finding my way into being a suspect.