For the second straight day, Nightmare Fuel reminds us of past entries from Miss Cleo’s vast collection. This time ’round, we’ve got to remember to back to watching Urban Legend and its initial sequel. Without looking back at that post (always a good idea, I mean, who needs consistency, amiright?), my recollection of those films is not rosy, especially for the sequel. I vaguely remember overly-convoluted and -contrived plots that, much like Scream, though they were much smarter than they actually were. I’ve seen worse, especially from that dark era of horror, but they’re pretty heinous. So why not complete the series by taking a look at the third entry (that I didn’t know existed until a few months ago), Urban Legends: Bloody Mary?
So what’s the deal here? Well, we kick things off with a trio of high school girls having a bit of a slumber party. It’s the night of Homecoming, but they’re unable to get dates, as one of them published a story in the school newspaper that the football team (apparently the only source of eligible dudes) took poorly. Yeah, sounds about right: three attractive girls unable to find dates outside of the jock set. Okay, sure. Anyway, they amuse themselves with spooky stories about urban legends, including a strangely prophetic tale about intended date rape that winds up as a murder (naturally) and, of course, the titular Bloody Mary. They all have a good laugh at their stories, then Samantha, our lead, blurts out “Bloody Mary” three times. Mind you, she’s nowhere near a mirror, much less one draped in darkness, but I guess this film thinks Bloody Mary is actually Beetlejuice, ’cause, yeah, she’s summoned her. The girls disappear that evening, but they were actually just victims of drugging and captivity, a “prank” this time by the jocks, and they return home. Things aren’t quite right, though, as people keep turning up dead in crazy ways. Insert me making a mocking ghost noise whilst flittering my fingers about.
I’m not gonna bury the lead any further, kids, this thing is downright awful, easily the worst of a franchise that wasn’t all that good to begin with. I expected a bit more from director Mary Lambert, what with her previous work on The In Crowd and Pet Sematary (as well as a few classic Madonna videos, like “Like a Virgin” and “Like a Prayer”), but the direction’s mostly fine, if a bit mundane. No, it’s the script that really screws us here, kids. Writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty were coming off of the runaway success of X-Men 2 when they penned this; later, they would team back up to write Superman Returns and X-Men: Apocalypse; I guess that first bit of success wasn’t a harbinger for the future, eh? (Admittedly, Dougherty did go on to write Krampus and Trick ‘r Treat, so he’s got some redemption, but Harris is left in the cold.) Here, they show that they have no idea how to write women of any age, as evinced by the horribly stereotypical depiction of a slumber party (I’m sure they all devolve into giggling pillow fights, right, ladies?), the atrocious attempts at you-go-girl! dialogue (much less the rest of the dialogue, now that I mention it), and a bizarre bit where a teenage girl in the early 2000s uses heeled dressing shoes instead of comfy slippers or nothing (gotta get that sexy strut on, even if you’re not quite legal and alone in your bedroom, just waking up). Every character is either relentlessly unlikable or just flat, and the death scenes reminded me of the Final Destination series if those films skipped all of the steps of their various Rube-Goldberg deaths apart from the final ones. At one point, some pale-ass douchebag who I’m supposed to think is threatening (NOPE!) mocks a fellow jock, telling him he needs to hit the tanning salon, the clay pot calling the ceramic kettle white. Jesus lord. And then there’s the “visions” or “hallucinations” or whatever, jabs of quick-edits and over-production stabbing into the action every so often; I initially had no idea whether or not the characters saw them or if they were just for the audience’s “benefit” (never a good sign), but I knew from the first instance that they were obnoxious. And then there’s the musical cue whenever someone’s about to die, which absolutely ruined Niki Harris’s “I Will Always Be There” for me, so thanks for that, movie!
I feel bad for everyone involved here (well, not the writers, they dug their own graves), especially Kate Mara, in one of her earlier film roles, and her sister Rooney, who makes her film debut in a short background appearance as a student. Neither should have their names attached to such a dung-pile, but they’ve been lucky enough to have had plenty of roles to distract people from this appearance.
I’ve been told that there’s a fourth film in the franchise, one that’s ditched the Urban Legends moniker, 2007’s Ghosts of Goldfield, but I’m not sure I’d be able to stomach that after this abomination. Skip this one, kids; stick with the original if you really wanna hit up the series, but steer as clear of this one as possible for your own good.
Allusions of Grandeur 