| | | What You Don't Believe Can Kill You.
When New England college student Natalie finds herself at the center of a series of sadistic murders seemingly inspired by urban legends, she resolves to find the truth about Pendleton's own legend, a twenty-five-year-old story of a student massacre at the hands of an Abnormal Psych professor. As the fraternities prepare to celebrate the macabre anniversary, Natalie discovers that she is the focus of the crazed killer's intentions in the ultimate urban legend--the story of her own horrific murder.
"...a teen-age moviegoer's dream. It has familiar young television stars...an edgy sense of humor, a tricky plot and characters too genre-savvy for their own good." Anita Gates, The New York Times
"The gimmicky premise keeps this tension-filled scarefest afloat." E! Online
"A hip-talking horror film along the lines of Scream." Jane Horowitz, The Washington Post
"...competently made, and the attractive cast emotes and screams energetically." Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Loads of thrills and chills!" Ron Brewington, American Urban Radio
Editor's Note
On an ordinary college campus, students are being killed off one by one in ways resembling various urban legends, 25 years after a covered-up dorm massacre. One lone student must seek out the truth--while keeping herself from becoming just another legendary victim at the same time. The fine cast includes Tara Reid, Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, and horror legend Robert Englund as the professor teaching his students about urban legends.
| Features | Audio: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai Dolby Digital TrueHD 5.1 Surround Sound | | Dubbed: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai | | Filmmaker's Audio Commentary | | Interactive Menus | | Making-Of Featurette | | Original Theatrical Trailer | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Thai | | This Is A Blu-Ray DVD Made For Blue-Laser Format Players Which Produce Higher Quality Picture & Sound |
| Technical Info
|
Release Information
| | Studio: Lions Gate |
| Release Date: 7/22/2008 |
| Running Time: 99 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1998 | | Catalog ID: 26529 | | UPC: 00043396265295 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed, Spanish Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Chinese | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 2.40:1 |
| Cast & Crew
|
| | Professional Reviews | USA Today
"...Scary and witty..." -- 3 out of 4 stars 10/23/1998 p.6ENew York Times
"...URBAN LEGEND is a teen-age moviegoer's dream....This one feels fresh....Nice work..." 09/25/1998 p.E15 ReelViews 6 of 10
Resurrected by the Wes Craven/Kevin Williamson collaboration, Scream, the slasher flick is alive and kicking in the late 1990s. There are, of course, several notable differences between the '80s version of the genre and the '90s revival. First and foremost, all overt sex and nudity has been removed from the screen (you don't have to be a virgin to survive). Secondly, '90s horror movies have attempted to beef up their backstories. It's no longer just about some implacable guy in a mask who wanders around eviscerating unsuspecting teens. Take the latest example, Urban Legend, which possesses a fascinating core idea (a serial killer who delights in re-creating the most grisly of modern myths). Unfortunately, as all film-goers know and this movie once again demonstrates, a solid premise does not guarantee a good story...Almost every known horror cliche is present. The car won't start. The phones don't work. Pointless scares are generated by sudden staccato bursts of music. The killer is the Person You Don't Suspect. And there's always at least one return engagement for a supposedly-dead villain. As interesting as the urban legend premise is, it's not enough to sustain the movie. Ultimately, there's an inverse relationship between the body count and the level of suspense. With each death, the film becomes less interesting. By the end, it's just a routine slasher flick with a too-predictable final "twist." - James Berardinelli
The Onion A.V. Club 5 of 10
With the possible exception of Pulp Fiction and Clerks, no film of the '90s inspired quite as many people to make quite as many bad, bad movies as Scream. And while the seemingly endless procession of Scream rip-offs is good news for members of the Dawson's Creek cast and people who enjoy gazing upon the cleavage of mid-level starlets, most of these films bear the same relationship to Scream that Slumber Party Massacre bore to the original Halloween. The latest and quite possibly weakest bastard child of Scream, Urban Legend, stars Alicia Witt as a perky, bland college student whose friends are killed one after another in the style of popular urban legends...Urban Legend has an undeniably clever premise, which plays on a sort of cultural mythology shared by the filmmakers and the ostensibly media-savvy audience, but it fails to do anything interesting with it. Urban legends draw their appeal from their exclusiveness, from the idea that they exist in a sort of cultural vacuum, ignored by traditional electronic media but thriving as a sort of post-technological American folklore. But as used in Urban Legend, this shared folklore is nothing more than the basis for a slew of bloody, unimaginative setpieces...Urban Legend is awash in red herrings, but it's difficult to care about the fate of Witt and her friends, since none of the characters seem to have any reason to exist other than to propel its convoluted plot. - Nathan Rabin
|
| |
|
|
|
