Urban Legends: The Final Cut follows Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison), a student at Alpine University who struggles to complete her thesis film on urban legends – only to have her crew members fall prey to fatal ‘accidents.’ Suspicious, Amy investigates and discovers a much more sinister hand at work. Now she must unmask the killer before she, too, becomes another urban legend.
Urban Legends is, as you’d expect another slasher that jumped on the sequel bandwagon and was pretty much by the numbers, following, like many have before, the Scream template. For me though, ‘by the numbers’ usually means I’ve enjoyed the movie and although it’s nothing special, it had enough mystery and some inventive kills to keep the generic slasher fan interested.
If you have seen the orignal Urban Legend, then you’ve basically seen Urban Legends: Final Cut because it’s more of the same whodunnit stalk and slash, only this time the majority of the kills are actually on screen, which was in contrast to its predecessor, where many of the deaths were off screen, which did really annoy me if I am being honest.
It follows the same formula but this time within a top film college where the students are all competing to win the “Hitcock prize” which obviously ensures Hollywood fame for the recipient. Amy as we know is going to make a film about a killer basing his murders on urban legends but of course, the film comes to life and following real urban legends, someone is killing off her crew one by one.
So that’s the basic plot, it’s simple and everyone can follow it, well I should they can. The scares are minimal and the action was enjoyable, the highlight of the movie however was the sue of humour.
This was really funny in some places, in particular, Loretta Devine, who was reprising her role from the orignal. What was also pretty good was the ending, I’m usually pretty good at working out who the killer is in this type of movie, but the reveal on this occasion had me totally shocked, even though on repeat viewings, it was actually pretty obvious.
As I alluded to earlier, this is a wannabee Scream like so many others before and after it, but of course, doesn’t match up, having said this, it is pure fun throughout and never dull. Just don’t expect an out-of-this-world slasher because you simply aren’t going to get it. If you’re not expecting much then give it a try. I really enjoyed it, plus there is an interesting cameo in the credits, provided you’ve seen the orignal.