Urban Legend Movie Review

Urban Legend is a 1998 horror movie directed by Jamie Blanks and starring Alicia Witt, Jared Leto, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, Robert Englund and Rebecca Gayheart.

The movie begins with a college student being killed by someone who was hiding in the backseat of her car. She was a student of Pendleton University. Everyone on campus is talking about it, including Natalie(Witt) and her friend Brenda(Gayheart). Their friend, Parker(Michael Rosenbaum) is telling them that one of the college buildings was the site of murders years ago. Everyone is spooked. The dean of the university doesn't want everyone to panic. He has a campus police officer called Reese Wilson(Loretta Devine) with him and they are trying to calm it all down. This doesn't sit well with a journalism student called Paul Gardner(Leto). He wants to find out all about the murder.

Natalie goes on a date with a classmate called Damon(Jackson). They are together in his car and he tries to get with her. She doesn't want to, so he goes outside to urinate. There is a killer out there and he ends up being hung from a tree above the car. Natalie sees this and she flees in terror back to the university and she tells Reese. The police come back to the spot with her, but there is no car and no Damon there. It looks like it was a prank. Her friends try to reassure her that it was a joke and that Damon will turn up. Unfortunately, Natalie's roommate gets killed. It is no longer safe. Paul digs into the history of the college and he discovers that there were actually murders there years ago. He finds that there is one person who survived it. He is called Professor Wexler(Englund).

The dean is murdered. Parker is the next to meet his demise during a party. Natalie realises that her
friend Sasha(Reid) is in danger and she goes to find her, but she witnesses the killer murdering her.
Paul and Brenda meet Natalie and they are all scared that Wexler might be the killer. But when they discover his dead body, they realise that this is not the case. Who is it? They all go in different directions and Natalie finds Brenda in the old building where the murders happened. At first, she thinks that Brenda has been caught by the killer. She gets knocked out and she wakes up to find Brenda standing over her.

She tells Natalie that she murdered those people because Natalie and Michelle had been driving one night and they had played an urban legend trick by turning off their headlights and chasing after the first car who flashed at them. Unfortunately, they hit and killed Brenda's fiancee and she is pissed!
She is going to remove Natalie's kidney when Reese shows up and stops her. There is a fight and Reese gets stabbed. Paul shows up, Natalie grabs Reese's gun and shoots Brenda. Brenda takes a dive out of the window. Is she dead? Are they ever?? Everything seems okay as Natalie and Paul drive away to get the police but Brenda pops up and tries to kill them. They crash the car and Brenda flies through the windscreen and into a river. Is she dead now??Nope. The movie ends with Brenda sitting with a different group of students who are talking about what happened at Pendleton. She tells them that the story they heard isn't true. She begins to tell them what really happened.

This film is a favourite of mine. It is similar to Scream, but I don't see that as a bad thing. There is a great cast in this. Jared Leto, Joshua Jackson, Alicia Witt, Robert Englund. The story is decent and the murders are based on various urban legends, hence the movie title. I think it's a lot of fun and I think it was one of those slashers from the 90's that really stood out- like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. If you enjoyed those, then you will like this one. I never hear that much about it and it's a shame because it is a really enjoyable slasher movie with a cast that is impressive. I love watching it every so often and I highly recommend it. I will give this one an 8/10.