Independent Films, Film Profiles

Urban Legend (film)

Urban Legend is a 1998 horror film starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Robert Englund, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Michael Rosenbaum, Danielle Harris, John Neville, and Loretta Devine. The film is based on the premise that a killer is using the methods of death described in certain urban legends as a means to kill his victims.The film was followed by two sequels. The first, Urban Legends: Final Cut, was released theatrically in 2000. The second, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, went direct-to-video in mid-2005.The film begins on a dark and stormy night as college student Michelle Mancini (Natasha Gregson Wagner) realizes she is near empty while driving in her car. She stops at a gas station where a creepy gas attendant (Brad Dourif) lures her out of the car by telling her there is a problem with her credit card payment and she must speak with her card issuer on the phone. Inside the gas station, Michelle realizes there is no one on the phone and the attendant has locked the door behind them. In a fit of fear, she maces the attendant and runs to her car, driving away before the attendant can warn her that there's someone in the back seat. As Michelle drives away, a figure in a dark coat with a fur trim around the hood sits up in the back seat and, with a swift blow from its axe, decapitates Michelle.The same night, on campus, a group of friends listens to Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum) tell an old story about one of the campus halls, Stanley Hall. According to the story, in 1973, an abnormal psychology teacher went crazy and killed all the students living in an on-campus residence hall. Supposedly, the college officials covered it up, not wanting the university's reputation damaged. The story is disregarded by Paul Gardner (Jared Leto), a school paper journalist as just one of many college campus myths. Still, the story sticks in their minds, especially for Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt), and Brenda BatesThe next day, Natalie and Brenda go to a literature class taught by Professor William Wexler (Robert Englund) with the subject of urban legends, modern day folk tales passed on under the guise of truth. Professor Wexler decides to demonstrate the power of such urban legends by having Brenda test one by eating a packet of Pop Rocks followed by drinking a Pepsi. Brenda declines, due to the famous story about the kid from the Life cereal commercials, Mikey, whose stomach supposedly exploded after he ate the combination. When she refuses to do it, class prankster Damon Brooks (Joshua Jackson) volunteers for the task. After eating the combination, Damon doubles over, choking and gagging, and collapses but then reveals it was merely a joke.After class, the front page of the campus newspaper has an article about Michelle Mancini's murder written by Paul but the papers are quickly confiscated by school officials, calling them "inflammatory."Later that night after going into a secluded area of woods to talk, Natalie reveals to Damon that she knew Michelle, but they hadn't spoken in years. Damon, playing on Natalie's vulnerability, tries to make a move on her but she rejects him. Upset, Damon goes into the woods to urinate but is attacked by the killer. He then is hung from a tree in a noose with the rope attached to the bumper of his car. As the killer approaches Natalie in the car, she attempts to drive away in reverse, causing the tethered Damon to fall onto the car, shattering the windshield. Natalie abandons the car and flees into the woods, screaming.The next day, no one believes Natalie's story due to Damon's penchant for pranks and tricks. Realizing both Damon's death and Michelle's murder closely resemble famous urban legends, Natalie goes to the library to read up on urban legends. Meanwhile, Natalie's roommate Tosh (Danielle Harris) is busy picking up an anonymous user off a Internet chat room. Tosh askes the user which room he is in. She goes to the restroom to put her makeup on, noting that this guy might become her next boyfriend. She returns to the computer, the user answers, saying, "YOURS!" The user is revealed to be the killer. The killer puts his hand on Tosh's mouth to prevent her from screaming and throws her on the bed. Tosh struggles to escape, but the killer keeps pushing her back in the bed and begins to strangle her. Natalie comes into the room, Tosh and the killer hear her come in, and the killer puts his hand on Tosh's mouth so that she won't scream, but she's making groans and gasps. Hearing Tosh's groans and gasps, Natalie assumes she's having sex in the room and doesn't turn on the lights. As Natalie goes to bed, the killer continues to strangle Tosh. Tosh dies as Natalie falls asleep. In the morning, Natalie discovers her roommate's body and the words, "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light" scrawled on the wall with Tosh's blood.Due to Tosh's goth tendencies as well as her affliction with bipolar disorder, school officials assume she committed suicide and attribute the writing on the wall to a morbid suicide note. Meanwhile Brenda is swimming at the school pool. Natalie walks in and sees a person in a fur-lined coat coming toward Brenda. Fearing it's the killer she tries to get her attention by banging on the glass of the room shes in. When that doesn't work she grabs a chair and slams it against the window,breaking the glass. Brenda looks up and so does the person in the coat. When she takes the hood off it reveals another girl who intended on swimming. She wasn't the killer. After, Natalie tells Brenda why she hadn't spoken to Michelle in such a long time. One night, Natalie and Michelle had been driving together when they decided to act out an urban legend: the one about gang members turning off their headlights and waiting for someone to flash them before they run them off the road. Michelle, who was driving, then turned off her lights and when another driver flashed them, they made a U-turn and followed until the other driver lost control and ran off the road. Natalie and Michelle got off on probation and the incident has haunted Natalie ever since. She now thinks someone is after her because of it.Ever the skeptic, Paul goes and does some research of his own about the Stanley Hall massacre and discovers Wexler was the sole survivor. Paul comes to the conclusion that Wexler was the killer; the college must have tried to cover up the killings and given Wexler a job for life in exchange for his silence, and now he's killing again.The weekend is coming up and the college students are partying as a tribute to the 25th anniversary of the Stanley Hall massacre, a grisly excuse to have fun. But as they are partying, across campus, Dean Adams (John Neville), the head of the school, is murdered after having his Achilles tendons slashed (another reference to a popular urban legend) and run over by his car forcing the emergency spikes of the parking lot into his back and killing him.Later at the party Parker gets a disturbing phone call telling him he's going to die tonight. Parker, not taking the call seriously, begins walking upstairs, thinking the caller is playing a prank based on the urban legend of the phone call being made from inside the house. The caller on the phone tells him he's got the wrong legend and it is "the Dog In The Microwave" legend. Parker bolts downstairs to find the inside of the microwave coated with what used to be his dog. Parker rushes to the bathroom and is violently ill before the killer finally gets him, shoves a beer bong down his throat and forces him to chug bathroom chemicals and pop rocks.The killer's next target is Sasha Thomas (Tara Reid), Parker's girlfriend and a popular college radio sex therapist. The killer goes to her studio and begins stalking her, and Sasha's panicked screams, sent over the radio, are mistaken for a tribute to the Stanley Hall massacre. Natalie hears the screams and runs through the pouring rain to the station, just in time to see Sasha killed with an axe.Fleeing from the station, Natalie finds Brenda and Paul, and they drive off to try and find help. Paul tells them of his discovery and convinces the girls that the killer is Wexler. When Paul stops at a gas station and get out, Natalie and Brenda discover Wexler’s dead body in the car and bolt, thinking Paul is the real killer. Natalie manages to make her way to a road but Brenda has since fallen behind. Natalie flags down a truck, driven by the school’s janitor, and accepts a ride. When the janitor flashes a car with its lights out, it swerves around and comes their way, and the driver is revealed to be the killer. After getting run off the road, Natalie once again luckily survives and makes her way back to the boarded-up Stanley Hall. She hears Brenda screaming from inside, presumably held captive by the killer. When Natalie breaks into the hall, she is knocked unconscious, now a prisoner herself.When Natalie comes to, she finds herself tied to a rickety old bed. The killer, standing over her, finally makes their identity known: Brenda. It is revealed that the boy Natalie and Michelle accidentally killed that fatal night was Brenda's boyfriend and soon-to-be fiancé. Driven mad by grief, Brenda is now enacting her revenge on Natalie, slowly killing those she knows and loves in the fashion of urban legends. The fate she's chosen for Natalie is to remove her kidney (or as stated, the first organ she sees) in the fashion of the legend, The Kidney Heist and begins slicing into her stomach. When Paul and campus security guard Reese Wilson (Loretta Devine) show up, a brief struggle ensues when Brenda decides whether to kill Paul or Natalie, and Reese shoots Brenda, causing the gun to slip out of her hand and allowing Natalie to grab it before she can do any more harm to any of them. Natalie shoots Brenda, who falls through a window behind her. Natalie and Paul drive off to get help for Reese, who was wounded in the struggle, but Brenda, who survived her gunshot wound, attacks Paul while he's driving and even tries another attack on Natalie. Trying to keep control of the car, Paul crashes on a bridge, sending Brenda through the windshield into the river below. Paul and Natalie watch her body float downstream and the horror seems to finally be over.An undetermined amount of time later, a new group of friends tell the story of Brenda's bloody rampage, and add to the conclusion that the police never found Brenda's body; it simply vanished downstream. The other students at the table balk at the story, saying that every college campus has a similar story. One of the girls at that table, however, tells the storyteller she believes him, but that he got the story wrong. The camera reveals the face of the girl to be Brenda, alive and well. The film ends on Brenda telling the group she'll tell them how the story really goes. Brenda also appears in Urban Legends: Final Cut.