Okay, here's the deal. I guess by now you've heard that Pepsi is about to introduce yet another label to its stable. Pepsi One, it's called. Seems to me they ought to call it, "Maybe This Will Finally Beat Coke." It just kills me, folks. Every stinking item in the grocery store these days has a "Lite" version, or a "Free" version, or a "Baked" version, so that you can attempt to con yourself into thinking you're consuming the original when you're not. To me, it's like eating a Styrofoam beer cooler and telling yourself it's rice cakes.
Well, friends, let me introduce you to the newest thing on the market in the way of slasher films. It's new, but it ain't an improvement by any means, no matter what bright color you wrap it in and market it with. New, from Columbia Tri-Star Pictures! It's Scream Lite! No, it's I Know What You Did Last Summer Free! NO! It's Scream/Summer Free Lite! More formally known as Urban Legend, the latest release from The Torch Lady and the Winged Horsey. It's nowhere near everything you wanted in a slasher film, and less.
In Brochure-Quality Pendleton College, there's a teacher who specializes in urban legends, those stories you've heard a hundred times, that always seem to have happened to "this friend's girlfriend's brother," or something, but no one can ever quite find proof that it ever actually happened. Cereal-commercial kid died eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke. Lady tried to dry a dog/cat/baby in a microwave. The couple on Lovers Lane that heard a story about an escaped killer with one hand on the radio, drives home, and finds a hook on the door handle when they get out. That kind of crap, like the campfire stories you tell to scare the bejeebers out of the new kid.
Well, suddenly, a serial killer appears at Pendleton, and he's killing folks by imitating those urban legends. And he's chosen as his prey the October issue of Tiger Beat magazine. Every slasher these days has to have one of the Top Ten teen swoons in it, and this time out "Dawson's Creek" offers up Joshua Jackson. He's grouped with "Cybil's" Alicia Witt, Jared Leto (Prefontaine), and the Noxema chick, Rebecca Gayheart, and together they suffer through this onslaught of mayhem and murder. The murderer has this big bug up his butt about Natalie (Witt), who, of course, has a (oooooohhhhhh...) secret in her past. Naturally, everyone she knows is, therefore, a target for this Dormitory Bogeyman.
Come on, folks. Are we really so ignorant? This thing could easily be a Xeroxed copy of the Scream script, with some name changes and all of the good laughs removed. The movie opens with a student, played by a starlet from a famous Hollywood family, being killed. Sound familiar? Girl with a dark secret being threatened, but all her friends are getting the axe before her. Echo....echo...echo. No one seems to think there's a need to take anything very serious concerning the focal point, in this case, urban legends. Hmmm, everyone was laughing at horror movies in Scream. Good grief, Charlie Brown, the Great Pumpkin was more original than this!
Oh, and let's talk about the "snappy" humor, like that in Scream. The Noxema chick is in this, so let's make a joke about Noxema and see who gets it. Bwaa-ha-ha.... The guy from "Dawson's Creek" is in this, let's play the "Dawson's Creek" theme music on the car radio. Stop, my sides are splitting... And, hey, let's name a character "Brenda," so we can pull in the "90210" crowd, too. Won't that be funny....
If someone can tell me what exactly rookie director Jamie Blanks was trying to do here, I'd be forever grateful. He keeps this thing aimed like a spoof, but, soon, you realize that this is s'posed to be serious. This ain't a gag, folks. Somebody meant this thing to be a frightening slice-and-dice horror movie, but rather than take the initiative set by people like Kevin Williamson, Blanks and scripter Silvio Horta feel more confident in shooting themselves in the foot. Trotting out Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger from Elm Street 1 - 44) as the slightly off-kilter professor. I get it... HA! Here's a scary stunt! Let's have people suddenly jump into the frame for no reason. BOO! I'm not even going to discuss the fact that, apparently, there are only like 19 students in this whole college by the end of the movie, because that would just be adding insult to an already-fatally-injured film. Forget shooting themselves in the foot. Blanks and Horta must enjoy scraping a cheese grater down their spine and throwing turpentine on the scratches. Nobody could've meant this thing to be so incredibly insipid. It's slickly made, and it looks all glossy and cool, but it's nothing. It's a fancy slipcover on a threadbare couch.
And, before you give me the argument that with slasher movies, there has to be a certain "suspension of disbelief." I grant you that, as well as suspension of logic, reason, and overall concern. But, under no circumstances should a viewer have to willingly suspend every bit of common sense in order to sit through 99 minutes of crap that should've gone right to a Cinemax time-filler slot.
If you absolutely, positively have to see a slasher movie, and you missed H20 : Halloween, and can't wait for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer later this fall, I guess you could go see Urban Legend. But, all in all, you'd be better off repeatedly whacking yourself in the forehead with a tack hammer. Take the money you'd waste going to see this waste of guitar picks, buy a book about urban legends, and have some real fun. At least, that way, when you're through, you'll still have the book. And read it while you drink a diet, caffeine-free soda and eat a bag of Baked Lay's. That way, you'll have the same bad taste in your mouth that you'd get from watching this movie.
Image copyright Tristar Pictures.
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