Urban Legends: Final Cut Reviews

Initial Thought: I only somewhat liked the first film albeit only slightly above average. Somehow I ended up skipping this one and watching the third one. That was not so enjoyable. Anyways I figured I would go ahead and finish off the series by seeing what I missed.

Characters/Acting: This has a relatively good cast for a sequel that is rated pretty low. I mean we have Loretta Devine, Anson Mount, Anthony Anderson and Eva Mendes. I thought the killer's mask was pretty neat. I thought everything with the twin was just stupid. The acting isn't all that bad. I mean it's pretty much the only good thing about this. The characters just all suck and have nothing interesting to offer.

Story: Urban legend-style killings begin to occur on a movie set, in this non-sequel sequel to "Urban Legend". The whole mystery of this is good. You are constantly questioning your detective skills on who the killer is. After the first death scene the rest become so uninteresting. They almost feel like they are part of a bad 70s horror film. Only one scene after the first death was particularly gory when we see the dead bodies and rats go in and out of the base of one girl's neck. The twist was pretty ridiculous. I did like how they linked this with the first one. The ending was the best part of the whole movie.

Directing/Writing: John Ottman is mostly known for his music scores in well known films. As a director however he doesn't have really anything. It's based off the characters by Silvio Horta. He is mostly known for Ugly Betty and the first film in this trilogy. Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson have collaborated on several movies I've seen. Scott wrote and directed Sinister without Paul however. He is also only writing the sequel. Pretty much everything else they've done together. The only film I thought sucked was their Hellraiser sequel Inferno. I still need to see Exorcism of Emily Rose and Devil's Knot. These guys actually did even worse than Inferno. I swear they must not be particularly good at making sequels. Their original stories always end up praised. That doesn't seem to make much sense.

Final Thought: This was a waste of talent. It was boring and a bit convoluted. The way this ended probably would have made a better movie than the third one ended up being. Not that it's a necessary film, but Bloody Mary was pretty awful. Oddly enough Bloody Mary is still slightly better than this. After the first one this series just plain sucked. I wouldn't recommend the fans of anyone in this to watch it. I wouldn't even recommend horror fans to it.

As I enjoyed the rather cheesy original Urban Legends film, I came to this expecting much of the same. A bit of a guilty pleasure to watch with no expectations with crisps and dip and a glass or two of wine.

However, this sequel is just bad, with little joy to be found. There aren’t even any decent scares or gore to liven things up. The film merely plods from one scene to another, the occasional murder or chase scene bookmarked by dreary characterisation and a plot that is so stupid and wafer-thin that it could blow away at any moment.

The only light in such a dank movie is Loretta Devine as security guard Reese, desperate to capture the essence of LL Cool J’s fun turn in the original. She’s immensely watchable but cannot save the scenes she’s in let alone the whole movie. Avoid.

I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but, somehow, I still ended up watching it. If I recall it correctly, I actually saw it because I have a weak spot for Eva Mendes (it was actually one of her very first movies). On top of that, I thought that the first installment in this franchise was not that bad as it was a well done slasher and I liked the whole urban legend concept. Unfortunately, this sequel was actually rather lame and, in fact, it had actually not much to do with any urban legends whatsoever (in fact, they did add some urban legends like, for example, when a character warns another one that cell phones cause cancer but it was just an underwhelming way to link this sequel to the previous installment). This time, they focused on some killings occuring on a movie set but the story and the characters were not interesting or entertaining at all. A few years later, they would come up with a 3rd installment, obviously a direct-to-dvd release, but I didn’t even bother check it out. Anyway, to conclude, I think it was a really weak slasher feature and I don’t think it is worth a look whatsoever, even if you like the genre.