18. Urban Legend (1998, Blanks)
By Eivind Langdal
2nd November 2009

The pepper spray. Did you notice the pepper spray? It makes its appearance in the first scene of Urban Legend, where a girl’s car almost runs out of gas before she barely makes it to a gas station. Apparently, she has never seen Seinfeld, where it was shown exactly how far beyond the “Out of gas” line you could drive before the car stopped (then again, that might not have the most realistic episode of the series, so never mind about that). But, the pepper spray. I keep going on about the pepper spray. What the hell am I talking about? Here’s what happens: when the girl arrives at the gas station, she is greeted by a stuttering attendant who, after having filled up the gas, says she needs to come inside because there is something wrong with her credit card. Frightened as she is, she opens her bag and does the smart thing: she takes out a pepper spray.

Now, reread that sentence. Pay strict to attention to some of the words. What am I trying to do here, apart from unintentionally annoying you by prolonging the revelation of my point? Well, I’m underlining that a character in a horror film actually, for once, does something smart. Sure, it doesn’t save her, but at least she tries. If there is an afterlife for characters in horror films, she should be proud. She didn’t just fight for her life, but she made a smart choice before she had to do that. She was precautious. She took the pepper spray.

This is not a big detail, is it? It’s certainly not deserving of two paragraphs in a review, right? Probably not, but I still think it is important to mention it, because, yes, the pepper spray is just a small detail. The scene itself is not terribly original, but it stands out because of that small detail. That actually goes for the entire film itself. Like the scene, it’s not terribly original, but it’s worth catching if you’re a horror film fanatic, because there are some nice touches here that belong of a nature that only true aficionados can appreciate. Everyone else will see a clichéd slasher with a ton of plot holes. Now, I can say for certain that any person that tells me that this is uneven film will have my complete understanding. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with that. Okay, so maybe the part about the plot holes is true. And it is a bit clichéd. But the film surprised me. I enjoyed it quite a lot, actually.

After the film’s prologue, we’re introduced to the main cast. As in any slasher, it’s really big. Why big? Because there have to be a lot of victims. I mean, if you have two characters, and one of them dies, what the hell is the killer going to do until it’s time for the climax? Cut his nails? Watch Arrested Development? I don’t think so. Now, let me introduce them. There’s Natalie, who is the protagonist, which means she gets to care and be emotionally conflicted. There’s Paul, a news-hungry journalist constantly on the lookout for… news. There’s Parker, who is obnoxious in a nonthreatening fashion. There’s Damon, who is a master of practical jokes. There’s Brenda, who is Natalie’s friend (which means she can’t be smart or emotionally conflicted). There’s the radio personality Sasha. There’s the campus guard who has seen Foxy Brown so many times she knows the screenplay by word (and most likely dream of doing some asswhopping of her own, Pam Grier-style). There’s also a weird janitor, and lastly, a professor played by Robert England (I hope I don’t hope to tell you who Robert Englund is).

Phew. Now, that’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Thankfully, there’s a killer on the loose to make the cast a bit smaller. He does that by cutting them up with an axe, or alternatively, arranging their murders to look like urban legends. Of course, at one point, one of the victims is killed by his car. I don’t know which urban legend that’s inspired by, but I’m sure there’s one. Or maybe not. It’s just one of many holes the movie hopes the audience won’t notice.

Now, if there’s one thing that’s unique about Urban Legends apart from the urban legends murder angle, it’s its large amount of false scares. Of course, just about every slasher has one of these, but this one has so many I lost count of how many there actually was in the end. While the film could have taken a Scream-style approach and used all these many false scares for some kind of satire, it seems more content to employ just because it thinks it works. That’s true for the first time. When it has happened more than five times, it gets tiring. And that’s just the ones in the film. Imagine having to film all those false scares. Directors usually use more than one take, you know. I can picture it: “Okay, so one more time: you think you’re not safe, but don’t worry, it’s just your friend who has just snuck up on you from out of the frame”.

There’s one thing I’d like to applaud in Urban Legend: the character Brenda. At first I figured she was just going to be just some dumb and promiscuous blonde who’d get her comeuppance in the first act, but she really surprised me. Not only is she not as dumb as she looks, but she actually envies the heroine in the romance-department. How often does that happen? Sure, I may be biased here considering she is smoking hot, but she went from being a character I thought was going to annoy me to one I suddenly found myself cheering on. It’s rare that I care enough for horror characters that aren’t the protagonists so much that I actually pray for their survival. Brenda, if you’re listening: you’re a great horror character.

Thanks to its urban legends gimmick, Urban Legends stands out a bit from its slasher brethren. Sure, it’s not as clever as Scream, nor is it as scary, but it’s still a harmless piece of fun. The murder scenes are inventive (one of them involving a car in the woods sees one of the characters become an unwilling accomplice in a brutal hanging) and it has enough self-irony to know it’s not supposed to be taken too seriously. Still, it has one hell of a finish. Once that final shot kicked in, I couldn’t help but smile.