October 12th - Urban Legends: The Final Cut (2000)

 

This is quite different from the previous Urban Legend (1998), with the film college setting, killer moving about in a fencing mask and raincoat, and victims attending the school being targeted, seemingly for being involved with certain bright, talented students (Jennifer Morrison ("House, MD"/"Once Upon a Tim") and Matthew Davis ("The Vampire Diaries"). Davis portrays twins, a film director with a lot of potential (a faked suicide by the murderer) and the brother who comes to campus to determine who killed the filmmaker. Morrison works as a member of Anson Mount's airplane slasher school film project, deciding to create her own based on urban legends. 

The students unaware of what awaits them include makeup artists (Anthony Anderson (in an early role, with all that personality already on full display) and Michael Bacall), a very bad actress who is a very attractive blonde (Jessica Cauffiel (I just watched her in "Valentine" a few weeks ago)), an expert camera operator (Marco Hofschneider), and assistant on set (Eva Mendes). The kills are very PG-13. A part of the camera is used to smash a face, two are electrocuted inside a creepy miner carnival ride through a cut cable and power box, a slit throat after a chase (made to look like a filmed scene), and a victim found hanging from a rope tied to a bell in a tower. 

Perhaps the goriest happens to a friend of the filmmaker twin Davis knows when she is drugged and awakens in a tub with a missing kidney and barely stitched wound on her side! When she tries to escape from a window, the killer just yanks on the bloody wound, opening the stitches...ouch! A window with broken glass is used to lop off her head to cap that one off.

Hart Bochner -- I just watched him twice this year in "Terror Train" (1980) -- is a teacher at the school, with a nice office discussing cinema verite and mise-en-scene with other professors. Bochner is one of a few judges determining which of his students will win the Hitchcock Award. He factors in the end in a twist I thought was rather out of left field and weird. So Joey Lawrence has a father big in the Hollywood industry and makes it a mission to know all about the students in his circle, including Morrison, whose own father was a renowned documentary filmmaker. Morrison wants to be successful due to her own talents and merits, but Lawrence confronts her about how she was able to get into the school due to her contacts and father's reputation. Morrison's father's success does tie to the killer's modus operandi. I thought that reveal was just weird, but I get that those behind the screenplay needed a reason for the killer to be offing these students who really do nothing wrong. Neither does Morrison or Davis (Times 2), but the one responsible is fueled by a history of disappointment and settling for a job less than the huge perks of a serious film director.

The film school setting is still a campus like the previous film so Urban Legends: The Final Cut (2000) does resemble Urban Legend in that regard. And Loretta Devine is now security on this brand new campus, returning as Reese, still quoting Pam Grier (from "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown", so that is a homage I can always get behind!). And Rebecca Gayheart has an amusing cameo at the end in a mental institution...as a nurse! This was okay. The film poster still follows the Scream model with the cast on it with the title, and the violence remains tame. Plenty of Morrison evading the killer, breaking windows, hiding behind equipment, locking doors, and on the run...at least, she gets to point a gun at the killer. But Davis never fares well against the killer, altercations galore result in him thrown against a wall and throttled by a shovel to the ground. I think you were starting to feel the fatigue four years after Scream set the genre on fire again. 2.5/5