Year:
2000
Studio:
Columbia Pictures/Phoenix Pictures
Movie:
2/5
DVD:
3/5
The first Urban Legends was a
good effort at a copycat of the wry teen thriller genre started by Scream. Urban Legends: Final Cut is a pale
imitation of the original UL, with a whole new cast (other than Loretta
Devine playing security guard Reese Wilson now at a new school). The
students are attending film school and competing for the prestigious
Hitchcock Award.
Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) decides to make a film about urban
legends and she recruits her student friends to help. Unfortunately
people start dying, though cleverly only the audience is shown the
death scenes, the bodies are hidden so the characters only suspect. But
one of the first real deaths is Travis (Matthew Davis), Amy's friend
who commits suicide.
After a while Amy is the only one that suspects that peolpe are really
being murdered. She has allies in Trevor, Travis' brother who suspects
that Travis was actually murdered though he's not sure about the other
murders, and Reese, who lived through the first movie so she
knows it's possible but without proof there's only so much she can do.
Strangely, most of the murders are done when she is around.
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UL:FC is an ok
movie. Some of the thriller scenes are kind of scary and there is a
real plot with some mystery. But I never really got into the story. I
liked that the protagonist is female and that security guard Reese is
back. It's really cool that Rebecca Gayheart makes a very small
uncredited appearance at the end, reprising her role from Urban Legends.
Director John Ottman provides the commentary track. Ottman also did the
musical score so you get both perspectives. He did mention that it was
hard to be objective. There are three other short segments that are
barely interesting.
What I liked: Eva Mendes is gorgeous playing the lesbian assistant
producer Vanessa. Returning character Reese Wilson, who has this
experience but doesn't ever come out straight and says it. Rebecca
Gayheart's cameo.
What I didn't like: although a lot of care and effort went into making
this movie, ultimately it's just not different and interesting enough
to have been made in the first place. It's just more of the same.
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