Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart

Grade: C+

Okay. It’s the twenty fifth anniversary of a bloody massacre that took place in your college campus. The students are discussing scary stories and legends. A parka clad killer is dispatching of the local youth. Your teacher is Freddy Kreugar. It doesn’t look good.

Making a horror movie has become less of a creative exercise, and more of a checklist. Plot device to separate our slasher from the competition (the killer, in this one, murders the students of a college campus according to urban legends). Check. Psycho killer in a costume or mask (Scream cornered the market in creepy costumes, the fisherman garb is taken... a snow parka will have to do). Check. A common weapon to off the TV Stars that you find most annoying (knife is overdone, hook is taken... an axe should do the trick). Check. Plenty of winky winky inside jokes because they worked so well for you-know-what (Dawson’s Creek song playing over speakers, etc.). Check. And a bunch of gore hungry teens who scream with delight at each sudden crescendo in the musical score. Based on the audience reaction, I’d say that’s an enthusiastic check as well.

For a film that applies every 90’s horror cliche in the book, Urban Legend often maintains a cool, fun, deliciously unoriginal tone. For at least the first two acts. When the killer is finally revealed, he or she lets loose what has to be the most overacted impression of a psycho killer known to celluloid. He or she rants, raves, bulges his or her eyes, fiddles with sharp objects, and slaps the good guy repeatedly (less is more Mr. or Mrs. Killer, less is definitely more). This is also the moment in which every eye in the overcrowded theater started to roll. Up until that point, however, Urban Legend is quite the entertaining slash festival.

Sure, there isn’t any single character here with an IQ over 85, while the killer appears to be a genius, able to read the minds of his or her victims, interpreting which dark hallway they’ll run to next. Sure, every thirty seconds or so, someone will bump into someone else with a loud "thrink!" from the surround sound system. And sure, the police force can’t seem to tell left from right or up from down. But, every now and then, a scene will come along in Urban Legend that, had I walked in at that point, would have made me believe that the film was an intelligent thriller. Such scenes would include the grisly opener, and the "Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn On The Light" legend, which appears halfway through the film.

Before the movie started, I was explaining to my friend that if you want to write a ridiculous screenplay, go all the way, so that everyone knows you’re just kidding. There’s a big difference between people laughing with you and people laughing at you. At first, when our heroine (Alicia Witt) sneaks into the abandoned campus building in search of her friend, after just being attacked by the killer, one might be tempted to laugh at her stupidity. But, eventually, the film starts laughing with you, because, when Urban Legend goes ridiculous, it goes all the way.