Scream arrived in 1996, revitalizing slasher movies and ushering in a rush of imitators—much like Halloween and Friday the 13th did during the genre’s first wave in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Now we’re in a third wave, with Scream’s successful return and the recent releases of brand-new movies in the late ‘90s-early 2000s I Know What You Did Last Summer and Final Destination series.
A few months ago, 1998’s Urban Legend—which spawned two sequels you’ve never heard of—was tapped with the resurrection wand and may soon be finding new life under producer Gary Dauberman (The Conjuring Universe). But the original, written off by some when it was released as a coattail-riding cash grab, is worth a fresh look.
Not only does it have a surprisingly good cast (including Twin Peaks’ Alicia Witt, Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund, a just-post-My So-Called Life Jared Leto, Halloween series veteran Danielle Harris, future Smallville star Michael Rosenbaum, and ‘90s teen dreams Joshua Jackson, Rebecca Gayheart, and Tara Reid; there’s even a cameo for Brad “Chucky” Dourif), but its premise overtly draws on the very folktales that inspired the earliest slasher films. It’s gimmicky, and it knows it—“An urban legend serial killer? It’s a stretch,” a skeptical character points out—but we wouldn’t have 1974’s Black Christmas without that old yarn about the killer who calls from inside the house.
Its setup gives Urban Legend a built-in list of terrors to choose from, as the script ticks off such scenarios as an axe-wielding killer hiding in the back seat of a car, the explosive blend of Pop Rocks and soda, the reveal of “aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” scrawled in blood across a bedroom wall, and more.
It’s a lot of trouble for any maniac to go to. But having the main characters in college together, taking the same “introduction to folklore” class, makes the elaborate death scenes at least thematically understandable, especially once the killer’s motivation is revealed.
That said, Urban Legend is also a deeply silly movie. It can’t resist winking at the audience, whether that’s playing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in a scene where you really need a character to “turn around” (per the lyrics) and realize her doom is lurking just behind her; casting the star of A Nightmare on Elm Street as a creepy college professor; or having the car stereo of Jackson’s character reveal he was blasting the Dawson’s Creek theme song. The campus cop, played by character actor Loretta Devine, indulges her Pam Grier obsession in multiple scenes… just because.
There are also tropes galore; the “killer on a college campus” is a time-worn concept, with Black Christmas to thank once again. Nearly every slasher movie spirals from a misdeed in the past so unforgivable that gruesome payback is the only solution (at least according to the killer), and Urban Legend teases out the details of the reveal in a way that doesn’t feel completely obvious. And even if you figure out who the parka-clad murderer is before the movie wants you to, the pieces fit together in a reasonably satisfying manner.
Urban Legend being a relic of the 1990s means it’s very dated to that specific pre-smartphone, early-days-of-the-internet era. Characters go to the library and school newspaper archives to look for clues that would take 10 seconds to look up in 2025, and they run to pay phones when they need to call for help. People’s pagers go off at interrupting moments. Witt’s character has to battle with her surly roommate to use their shared landline—interrupting the girl’s dial-up message board trolling for goth dudes to hook up with.
An Urban Legend remake set in contemporary times—as all the recent slasher reboot movies have been—would have far more advanced technology to help its characters communicate while figuring out what’s happening around them. But it’ll still need to tie into the stories that justify its title, perhaps by adapting and updating urban legends that have become viral sensations. These tales may catch fire thanks to the internet, but they still draw on our deepest, darkest fears. Are you in the house alone?
Urban Legend streams on Shudder starting August 1.
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