Reviews of Urban Legend

I have such a soft spot for ***Urban Legend***. It's one of those late '90s slashers that gets better every time I revisit it, partly because it's so much fun and partly because the nostalgia is almost overwhelming. The college setting, the clothes, the music, the gorgeous young cast, the complete absence of cell phones when anyone actually needs help. Everything about it takes me right back to that particular era of horror, when every campus seemed to have a masked killer running around. The cast is great, too. Alicia Witt makes for a genuinely sympathetic final girl, Rebecca Gayheart is a blast, and you've got Jared Leto, Joshua Jackson, Michael Rosenbaum, Loretta Devine, and even Robert Englund filling out this ridiculously stacked ensemble. Everyone feels like they belongs in this very specific late '90s universe. And the kills! They're creative, nasty, and often wonderfully ridiculous, with the urban legend gimmick giving each murder its own little personality. The movie also has some really good twists and turns, throwing suspicion around so freely that practically everyone gets a moment to look guilty. It's the kind of mystery that's especially fun to revisit once you know who's behind everything. My favourite sequence will always be Tara Reid's chase through the radio station. It's such a fantastic, prolonged bit of slasher mayhem, with Sasha screaming, running up and down stairs, and desperately trying to get someone to help her. I find myself hoping she'll somehow make it every single time, even though I know exactly what's coming. Unfortunately, this killer is pretty damn brutal! It's stylish, suspenseful, occasionally silly, and absolutely drenched in nostalgia. I love how enthusiastically it embraces all the things that make a good old-fashioned slasher so entertaining. Just a ridiculously fun movie.