The Slasher genre was irrefutably changed once Wes Craven’s Scream hit theaters in 1996, despite the fact that a handful of films had already prospected upon the, albeit soft, ground upon which the legend was later constructed. Inevitably, once a pivotal, groundbreaking feature chisels out its small corner of the universal mindset, it is inevitable that audiences will demand more of the same. Unfortunately, such expectations and demands are unjust in that a groundbreaking film is just that. Thus, to replicate such, well, defeats the purpose.
It is just such a rock-and-a-hard-place scenario that first-time director Jamie Blanks finds himself. The tremors that are all-too-frequently felt after a cinematic earthquake are the unavoidable cash-ins by production companies that know that audiences will be readily placated so long as their newest product seems to mumble the promise of another Richter-esque experience. Luckily for viewers, Blanks navigates between both Scream and logistically-impossible audience demand with Urban Legend.
Urban Legend is a by-the-numbers slasher flick replete with every cliché which pot marks the genre. However, unlike many of its horror brethren, it faithfully plays by the rules while coyly batting its eyes at the viewer. As such, the work is a conglomeration of Scream and, ironically, Jon Amiel’s Copycat, as Blanks’s characters find themselves cognizant of the murderer’s pattern but, alas, are unable to determine who’s enacting the slayings.
Equal parts postmodern, self-aware horror and murder mystery, a college in Maine finds itself plagued by a serial killer who is using popular urban myths as an instruction manual. Urban Legend distinguishes itself from the droves of horror Xeroxes wading around in the wake of a recent genre-redefining masterpiece in that it is fairly well written and, horror-of-all-horrors, respects its audience. For example, as Roger Ebert observes, “no character is wasted” as the identity of the killer is kept at bay while everyone is given a plausible m.o. during the course of the proceedings. Cleverly, one character’s potential interest in accruing a body count becomes a double-edged sword for, once such is uttered, we find that his guilt is all but assured due to circumstance.
Blanks nevertheless remains simultaneously conscious of the subgenre in which he is working as well as the period in which his production is appearing as that he pauses to instill the automatic culpability of the trademark eerie janitor who is capable of murder because, well, he’s just weird. Yet the filmmaker never pulls punches for he reminds his audience that his agenda is pure fun and that, as such, he is not attempting to rival Craven or even so much as insinuate that what we are being given in remotely comparable to Scream. In short, he is selling us a burger and fries and telling us so instead of trying to pass his brown paper bag production off as fine cuisine.
This, in part, is why there is more fun to be had with Urban Legend than most follow-ups to a blockbuster for, knowing and confessing his itinerary, Blanks avails himself to having fun with the work where he otherwise would be obligated to play it straight and thereby vainly fail at esteeming to meet impossible, otherwise arbitrary, expectations. Such is evidenced in the very postmodern parody witnessed at the finale which mocks the everything which came before–Scream, as well as the whole of the genre–not unlike what Alfred Hitchcock did in Psycho with a wry five-minute, all encompassing and revealing, psychoanalytic session with Norman Bates.
Granted, we could quibble over Blanks’s missed moments. For instance, it is stated in the film that an urban legend is a contemporary folktale by which a moral is to be ultimately learned. The example given is the signature myth of the babysitter receiving threatening phone calls from inside the residence which she is working, ergo, women “mind your children.” In lieu of this potential for a Halloween-esque exposé into ethics, Urban Legend merely uses its titular rubric as a springboard upon which to base a film. Moreover, and perhaps the more legitimate complaint when we take into account that the impetus for the work is sardonic fun, is the faux pas witnessed during the epilogue in which, if the prologue following the opening credits were handled properly, would have relegated the audience to wry, retrospective giggles. But, hey, can we seriously complain when we have a “Whodunnit” in which the culprit’s identity is stated verbatim in Latin throughout the film?
By the end of the day, Jamie Blanks’s Urban Legend usurps the forthcoming complaint that it isn’t Scream by concurrently following in its paterfamilias’s footsteps while thumbing its nose at Craven’s work. Unfortunately, many critics carried their expectations into the theater and, once Urban Legend proved not to be Scream Incarnate, the confirmed observer expectation and bias unjustly vented itself on the written page. Yet, the style and mocking good-natured manner in which Blanks executes his all-but-futile affair nevertheless struck a cord for, amid rote dialogue and inane characterization, more than one critic hypothesized what the film could have been in the hands of David Fincher, John Carpenter, or even Craven. Such is not humored lest we are in the presence of potential because we don’t have too many people humoring the “What if . . . ” of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan if it where to have been helmed by Steven Spielberg.
This film provided by Cape Video, the premier supplier of hard-to-find and out-of-print horror films. Check out their website at http://www.capevideoonline.com
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
