User reviews

"Urban Legends: Final Cut" is a sequel to the 1998 slasher movie "Urban Legend". The sequel concerns a group of college coeds, primarily lead by aspiring film director Amy Mayfield. Amy is trying to direct a horror film for her latest project, and is striving to be awarded the Hitchock Award from her school. She introduces the idea of a horror film based on urban legends, but after the crew of filmmakers begin to shoot their project, cast and crew members begin to disappear one by one. The more of the film that is shot, the more students begin to die. Who is responsible for the killing? Could it be Travis' twin brother Trevor? Or could it be someone else? Who knows? Who cares?

The original "Urban Legend" wasn't Oscar worthy but it had a semi-original story, some horror clichés tossed in. But for the most part, it was a decent slasher film. This follow-up is nowhere near the first film. The story was somewhat weak, and it was as clichéd as could be - bumps in the dark, eerie shadows, a misrepresenting interlude, and a killer who can appear out of thin air. The ending wasn't as shocking as the filmmakers were expecting it to be, and the little sequence before the credits roll tied this film to the original, but for what purpose? Reese, the female campus security cop from the original, returns in this film as the a new security guard on this campus, and does give a few laughs with her "Foxy Brown" imitations. The Amy character, our leading woman, does make some smart moves in the film, but all of the others make dumb decisions that cost them their lives. The scene that stood out the most of the whole film was the infamous "kidney" scene, which was actually pretty well constructed and was disgusting enough.

Overall, "Urban Legends: Final Cut" isn't anything great. The story wasn't anything we haven't seen before, it's your basic "find out who the killer is" horror movie. It serves well as a gory slasher flick, but there is nothing new that it has to offer and very little surprises at all. Put all that aside, fans of the first movie may want to check this out. But, while the original wasn't great, I can confidently say it was better than the sequel. 5/10.

Urban Legends: Final Cut starts off on the right note just like the original. It doesn't have horror classic written all over it like the first one did when it began but it still starts off above average. However just like the orignal once the film begins to progress it slowly turns into another crappy slasher film.

The premise uses the whole movie within a movie tie in that is quite frankly getting a bit tired. Our new heroine is trying to win the prestigious Hitchcock Award for her new film which is about a serial killer who kills his victims based on Urban Legends. however once murders begin to happen on the set it becomes much harder to seperate fact from fiction.

What i Liked:

The heroine in this film is far more engaging than the one from the first film. She gives an honest performance and despite a tepid script she holds her own.

Very interesting to see Joey...no i mean Joseph Lawrence in this film. I joked about him being in it when i first heard about it but he was actually kinda good. In fact i wish he could've been in it more because he provides some pretty funny moments in the film.

i liked how it wasn't just a slasher film. During certain moments it played like a thriller and for at least the majority of the film the whodunit aspect is quite engaging.

i liked the use of seperating fact from fiction. That was a bit interesting. The scene where thry begin to watch Amy's reel and the killer switches it to the death he filmed was pretty intense.

What i didn't Like:

Where in the hell were the urban legend deaths. We got one and that was it. The one they has was pretty good but the film is called urban legend you would tihnk they would utilize that.

The last half of the film is even more ludicrious than the one in the first film. i found my self dumbfounded that they actually were allowed to produce the last half of this film. what a disappointed.

You can tell that we're running out of costumes for the killer to wear. The fencing mask and black apparel might seem frightening to some but all i kept thinking was the killer looks like a giant micro-phone.

The acting, with the exception of two people, is so painfully bad. My two year old brother could even act circles around these people.

This might not say much but at least this sequelis better than something like I Still Know What you did Last Summer. It barely sinks below the level of the original and i guess that says something. It's no film masterpiece but i tihnk fans of the first film may enjoy it.

5/10

As a former film student the setting for the film had some appeal. Film students after the coveted Hitchcock Award strive to make the film that will secure them a spot in Hollywood, just like the honored alumni before them. Unfortunately the power of greed has someone taking out the competition.

It begins with an obvious film-within-a-film cliché to introduce us to all the principal characters/victims of the film. The cast, a slew of nobodies, lacks any true depth and continually stumbles through forced 21st dialogue. The only recognizable face, Joey Lawrence of Blossom fame, has matured in looks but not so much in talent. In fact, the most entertaining parts of the film are when the killer `urbanizes' his victims making the viewer happy to see them go.

The entire story is weak and too many standard horror movie conventions are tossed into the mix. Bumps in the dark, shadows in the background and masked characters that appear out of nowhere are tired repeats of films in our past. As expected, every character is given a reason to be the killer until the very next scene when they are exonerated because another character seems more deserving.

With many veiled references to Alfred Hitchcock's films, the filmmakers may have thought they were honoring the great director but in reality the idea is so poorly done that they only come across as cheap rip-offs. Stair climbing in a tower ala Vertigo and a weak wheelchair scene ala Rear Window are two that come to mind.

The whole scary movie genre was given life by Scream and now it ought to be put out of its misery with one swift swing of the ax.

2 1/2 out of 5

Urban Legends: Final Cut is a great sequel to Urban Legend. It is not like other horror movies because in the first one, the mask was different, other horror movies have the same masks for all the sequels that they have.

I think that the return of Reese was good because she is able to understand Amy, in what is happening to her, when she realises that something is wrong, because of what happened the last time.

Also, Rebecca Gayheart's return at the end was excellent. I think that was a great surprise. I didn't expect to see Rebecca in the sequel before I knew, she had a cameo appearance. Not all horrors do that either. Even though the killer is different. The killer from the first one is in the second.

Well this movie is great and I hope all of you enjoy it too!

I have to ask myself why did I even rent this... an ex-girlfriend recommended it so maybe it was all some sort of revenge...

Actually I really liked scream 3 so I was a bit hopeful in watching this but my hopes were mangled much like a fragile monarch butterfly caught in a lawnmower. The story was just horrible; it made no sense just a stream of unconnected gore scenes that don't build tension or suspense. The Characters aren't even amusing stereotypes, and not that the actors had much to work with in the first place.

The central problem with movies like this...without good characters the movie drags, the gore scenes become meaningless and we don't care who lives and who dies.

The stolen kidney death scene was nice and brutal, and the campus where it was filmed was really cool, that's about it on the good points.

URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT

Aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Sound formats: Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDS

Several film students at an isolated university campus are targeted by a serial killer who patterns his/her crimes after various urban legends.

John Ottman's unnecessary sequel is a disastrous jumble of humor and horror which isn't nearly as funny or frightening as the filmmakers might have hoped, and the visual references to various classic movies (most notably the VERTIGO-inspired climax) seem entirely superfluous. Most of the murders are routine, except for a grisly decapitation inspired by a similar sequence in Dario Argento's INFERNO (1980), but the rest of the movie adheres strictly to formula, as a masked killer strives to frame weak-willed heroine Jennifer Morrison for a series of brutal crimes. Only two of the characters from the original URBAN LEGEND (1998) have been retained: Loretta Devine as the campus security guard whose aspirations toward COFFY-style bravery are finally realized during a climactic confrontation with the killer, when he/she makes the mistake of trying to punch her out (Devine retaliates with the best line of dialogue in the entire movie!), and Rebecca Gayheart in an unbilled cameo which should raise a smile amongst devotees of the original film.

The supporting cast is handsome but interchangeable, including Matthew Davis (TIGERLAND) as Morrison's potential love interest, Jessica Cauffiel (VALENTINE) as a dizzy would-be actress whose final sequence resembles one of the more famous set-pieces from PEEPING TOM (1959), Eva Mendes (ONCE UPON A TIME IN Mexico) as a statuesque lesbian beauty whose fondness for Morrison lands her in a whole heap of trouble, and Hart Bochner (APARTMENT ZERO, SUPERGIRL) as an unlikely college professor. Production values are polished, but the movie amounts to little more than an uninspired rehash, and represents an inauspicious debut for former composer/editor Ottman (THE USUAL SUSPECTS). Also starring Joseph Lawrence, Anson Mount and Marco Hofschneider.

I'm just a sucker for a slasher! No matter how bad they are I usually enjoy them all even "Halloween: Resurrection" was quite entertaining in my book, although not needed one bit! "Urban Legends" was another slasher I enjoyed and although I know it's nothing special, it's certainly no "Scream", "Urban Legends: Final Cut" tries to enter the "Scream" franchise but just simply doesn't have the same balls "Scream" has.

Nevertheless it was entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable! It starts out a little bit like Wes Craven's "New Nightmare" being set on a film set, (also like "Scream 3"). If you have seen "Urban Legends" then you basically have seen "Urban Legends: Final Cut" because it's more of the same stalk and slash, only this time not all the kills are off-screen! (That really annoyed me in the first one!) It follows the same formula on the set of a top film college. Everyones trying to win the "Hitcock prize" by making low-budget crap and a Kirsten Dunst look-a-like (the real one was too expensive) is going to make a film about a killer basing his murders on urban legends (de ja vu!) Only the film comes to life and someone is killing off her crew.

That's the basic plot, it's simple and everyone can follow it. This is the type of film girls would watch after "Twilight" on a sleepover thinking its a really adult, extreme horror film after being mildly scared by "Twilight". That means that for the rest of us, the scares are minimal and the action is just enjoyable instead of heart-stopping! However, what I did like was the way it used humour.

It was really funny in some places and the black security guard was a hoot baby! So you can't say that this film wasn't fun. What was also fantastic was the ending! I thought I was being very clever in sussing out who the killer was but it took me completely by surprise! "Urban Legends: Final Cut" is a wannabee "Scream" for a more miniature audience (i.e. 12+) it tries to be clever and sometimes it is but it is fun throughout and never dull. Just don't expect an out-of-this-world slasher because you simply aren't going to get it. If you're not expecting much then give it a try. I really enjoyed it.

Music composer John Ottman and editor for Bryan Singer films, tries his hand at directing and does a reasonable job with this entertaining derivative meta slasher. The slashings and goings on take place at the most prestigious and unrealistic film school imaginable and a fencing masked killer is wiping out one film student after another. The whole film is exceptionally dumb and doesn't really have anything to do with urban legends, with the exception of a tacked on waking up in a bathtub missing a kidney scene, but Jennifer Morrison is cute and does a good job with this material. None of the deaths are memorable, but the film has a cheesy playful side that knows it's B material and Ottman runs with it.

A student filmmaker's thesis project encounters production problems when the actors and crew of her film start getting killed by a monstrous force.

Jennifer Morrison stars as Amy Mayfield, a student at a prestigious film school, unsure about what her thesis film is going to be. But after a conversation with security guard Reese Wilson about her experience with a series of murders that had happened on the campus she had previously worked in, she is inspired to make a film about a serial killer murdering in the fashion of urban legends.

I rewatched this on Blu-ray in the new collector's edition trilogy, although I have seen the film in the past. The film is carried by Morrison's gratifying performance, alongside Loretta Davis bringing comic relief to the film. Where the film succeeds is in its classiness as a horror picture, and director John Ottman has proven that he can successfully cross over from being, not only a gifted composer but also a respectable filmmaker. The film embraces the horror genre wholeheartedly and giving us a nail-biting, heart-jolting experience. Where I found the film fell short is the fact it's very keen on keeping the film (mostly) bloodless and a lot of the deaths happen off-screen or cut away just as it happens, although I think the film would've benefitted from more gore and brutality. Which is not something I would normally say. The end of the film wraps up reminiscent of an episode of "Scooby-Doo" with a nice nod to the original courtesy of Rebecca Gayheart. It's a fun watch.

I saw URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT without seeing the first one and after watching ULFC, I don't want to see the first one. This film was bad. Schlocky, lazy, uninspired filmmaking. There's a scene at the end when the girls walk up a tower while they're being pursued by the killer. The scene is an almost exact copy of the last scene in FINAL EXAM, a HALLOWEEN rip-off made in 1981. And no, the director or writer surely didn't want this scene to be a "homage" of sorts to FINAL EXAM. No one saw FINAL EXAM. So if URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT needed to rip-off a scene from FINAL EXAM, which was a rip-off of HALLOWEEN, well, imagine how BAD this movie is!!!!

starring: Jennifer Morrison, Loretta Devine, Joseph Lawrence, Matthew Davis, Anson Mount, Jessica Cauffiel, Eva Mendes, and Jacinda Barrett.

plot: A killer in a fencing mask is killing off students at a prestigious film school, staring with actress, Lisa (Jacinda Barrett). After a popular director named Travis Stark (Matthew Davis) is found shot, apparently from suicide, his twin brother Trevor (still, Matthew Davis) sneaks into campus and teams up with writer Amy (Jennifer Morrison) to try and catch the killer as more bodies begin to drop.

review: This is a very fun sequel. I love the cast, its got Loretta Devine from the original UL, Joseph Lawrence from Do You Wanna Know A Secret?, Jessica Cauffiel from Valentine, and Jacinda Barrett from Campfire Tales. This has great gore, great acting, good directing, and good writing. But the killer's motive stinks!

9/10.

This film was hard to except. I understood what the film makers were trying to do with it, but ULFC came up lacking. It lacked in a good story line background, and in cheesy acting mostly done by on character who was just too annoying. (hint never let a bad actress play a bad actress in a movie). That being said I do have one good thing to say about it. It does not hold anything back. We see much more gore than in the first. Cinematography was excellent, sometimes it mimicked other films at times, but It was all in good fun. If you liked UL, see this. And for those who don't want the end spoiled don't read the next statement.

Just the fact that Rebecca Gayheart has a cameo at the end is reason enough to see the film.

I found Urban Legends the Final CUt to be a better movie than I thought. It's plot was interesting and I didn't guess who the killer was! It had great allusions to the first including a wonderful cameo appearance at the end by Rebecca Gayheart as a nurse! I found it to be a great movie and highly recommend it for teens who aren't looking for a movie too scary!

What was John Ottman thinking when he made this film? Did he actually believe this would be a good movie? This is nothing but your stereotypical slasher film (AGAIN), where another masked killer is off killing college students. I'm tired of these kinds of films. It's the same thing all the time, either with high school students or college students. Hollywood needs to come up with some original stuff for a change.

Anyway back to the movie. It starts off on a set of a film in the making and the cast gets introduced into the picture. The killing really doesn't start 'till about 15 or so minutes into the film. The plot itself is so stupid because the only reason they can explain why the person is killing people off is because of some Hitchcock award. What the heck? It's not like if I don't win some award that I'm gonna start killing people off.

Another thing that kinda makes no sense is that there's only one cop in the whole college campus. I mean are we to believe that this is some super cop that needs no partner? A modern day superman? I would think that after the first two deaths or so that they'd get enough sense to bring in another officer, but nooooooo. So many plot holes, so little time to bash them.

Also, what's with all these stupid masks that's been in these slasher films recently? First we get a ghostface (the best by far), then an oversized raincoat, then a giant snowjacket, and then there's this fencing mask. I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of right now. I mean if a killer really wanted to conceal his identity that he'd kill the people off then get the heck out of the city, but no he chooses to hang around until someone figures him out. I'd like to see one slasher where the guy wears some sort of wicked facepaint instead of a stupid jacket or a ridicules mask.

Well anyway, the only thing really bad about this film is what's the most important of all, and that's the plot. It was just too overdone and predictable. There weren't even any good scares. I wouldn't be surprised if they made another sequel to this though. Maybe this time the killer will be someone's half brother or great uncle or maybe even the neighborhood kid who constantly stairs out the window.

Geez.

Having already seen 1998's "Urban Legend", I then saw "Urban Legends: Final Cut" many years ago, but it didn't really register in my mind. Now I've seen it again. It's pretty much what you'd expect in a slasher. The original was obviously riding "Scream"'s coattails, but it at least managed to have an interesting theme. This one is practically a remake of "Scream 2".

What I did find neat about the movie was Eva Mendes's early appearance, which of course I didn't notice the first time around (having not been familiar with Mendes in 2000-2001). That's just about all that I can say about this routine slasher.

Ryan Gosling is one lucky dude to get to be with Eva Mendes.

By some strange birth-defect, I admit to a certain level of fandom for the horror genre. Having said that, I rent these type of films with *seriously* lowered expectations. All I ask for is some good gore and a spooky killer. And this heaping pile fails to deliver either.

"UL:Final Cut" is exactly the type of film that the Scream trilogy attempted to parodize. Except that this film isn't attempting satire, it's taking itself seriously, utilizing every expired 80-s horror cliche imaginable:

-Girl walks into dark empty room/girl walks backward into dark, empty corner/girl runs into dark, spooky, woods....instead of running to that nice, brightly lit building. Duh.

If "Scream" succeeded at anything, it was at pointing out how completely absurd these type of plot contrivances are. Apparently, the lazy writers of "UL-Final Cut" learned nothing. Or simply didn't care.

Oh, and there's more...

-Girl tries to flee from killer, trips over her own hooves every twelve feet/girl tries to exit through door, door won't open....oh wait, it opens! Apparently a good 30 second terrified rattling of the doorknob was all it needed...<groan>

And the mother-of-all-horror-cliches...

-Girl runs from killer, panting and heaving, in an exhausting attempt to ditch her stalker...killer pursues at a comfortable cruising speed of 3 baby steps per minute. Yet killer always catches up. Huh?

Of course the first "U-L" was misery to endure, however this sequel ups the ante and takes misery to nth.

The funhouse-scene had perhaps a flickering of potential but quickly comes up lame. The deaths in this scene were super boring and featured perhaps the worst use of latex since the sleestaks in Land of the Lost.

Watching this, I couldn't help but to think that I had a better time having that abcess drained...

The first "U-L" used up all the interesting Urban Legends and so all you get here is some lame Scream 3 rip-off about murders on a film set. If only life imitated art , we would have been spared this pointless mess.

There is absolutely no redeemable quality to this waste, even for the most avid fans of the genre. It straight-up sucks, and that's being generous.

And what was up with the pathetic attempt at an in-joke? The Gina Gershon clone with pontoon-like lipses and snaggle-teeth. And guess what, she plays a lesbian! Oooh, inspired casting!! Not.

There isn't a rating on IMDB that's low enough to accurately reflect the sheer mind-numbing dumbness of Urban legend: Final Cut. Skip it a rent a Shannon Tweed flick.

Urban Legend is a nostalgia bomb for me, which means that it's firmly cemented as one of my favourite slashers and sits firmly in my top ten favourite horrors of all time.

With that said, expectations for the sequel were high and, though it didn't reach the same level as the first, I feel like it deserves more respect than it gets. The casting is great, performances good and the twist at the end, while being a little silly, is a fun nod to connect it back to the original.

Much like the polarising Scream 3, Urban Legend 2:Final Cut has a different tone to the film that started the franchise, yet both are fun watch. Something which CANNOT be said for Urban legends: Bloody Mary, which is almost unwatchable, yet scores almost the same IMDB rating as the second.

I enjoyed the first film in this series quite a bit but this follow up effort, set in film school is truly terrible. Aside from the fact that the filmmakers don't seem to have ever set foot in an actual film school, the story has many flaws the most glaring being that the characters are all flat, uninteresting and badly acted. The direction and cinematography are equally hackneyed and the gore effects, once the saving grace of this sort of bad horror effort, are just so-so. Avoid at all costs, go rent the original instead. GRADE: F

I liked the original "Urban Legend" and I liked this one to. It has some suspense, and pretty much does what it's supposed to do. Another thing that I liked about this was that it didn't bring back the killer from the first film. It showed some originality by setting a "sequel" in a different location and dealing with, mainly, a different cast. My rating for both "Urban Legend" and "Urban Legends: Final Cut": 8/10

A film that can generate the most fiendish criticisms of all time, such as "pure crap" and "worst film ever made" etc etc, yet still manage to actually entertain some people, not because it is "so bad it's good" but because it is actually quite good must be hiding something from most of its audience.

Basically, I think very few people "get" this film.

In years to come this will be remembered as quite a well done little slasher flick, and will garner the kind of cult status that films like April Fool's Day and Prom Night achieved.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. And unfortunately for this movie, it was the Dark Ages. This is my second time commenting on Urban Legends, but I just hate the film so much I have to comment on it again. This film left so many questions in my head, like who would want the laborious task of making this film.

First off lets start with the acting. Who in the blue hell are these people, and what are they doing in a horror movie? These people couldn't act nor run properly for that matter. I wouldn't trust these people to do my dishes because they probably couldn't do that right either.

Next stop, the murders themselves. To be painfully honest, the first murder was adequate. But what happened after that. Using a f***ing wooden spoon would have brightened up the rest of the murders and made them more interesting. Using electricity and bludgeoning someone with a camera lenses is not horror movie material, no matter what you've been smoking. Someone obviously said yes to the scriptwriter to many times. The Good Lord gave you balls, people, it wouldn't hurt to use them once in a while.

And now, my favourite. The patented killer costume. Jason (if he were dead) must be rolling in his grave. When I first saw the killers costume, I laughed till I cried. And then I felt sorry for the poor b****rd. What were they thinking of, giving the killer a fencing mask and a frock was ridiculous. They may as well have given him a priest collar to round it off. I've seen scarier looks on pimples. I suppose the biggest problem with the costume was that the fencing mask looked too tight against the slicker and didn't look scary at all. The killers motive was the worst I've ever heard.

I think the films biggest flaw was that it didn't seem like a horror movie. Urban Legend may not have been great but at least it felt like a horror. The movie lacked everything and that's why I give it 1 out of 10.