Common Sense Note
The costumed killer stalks and chases his victims. Several jump scenes--the killer suddenly appears, bodies fall unexpectedly from the ceiling. Bloody messages on mirrors and walls. Frequent extreme profanity throughout. Every character acts questionably, from the murderer who kills many students to Amy, who insists on investigating the murders alone at night. Several characters drink and smoke. Frequent sexual references, ranging from sexually transmitted diseases to porno movies. A couple on an airplane decide to enter the "mile high club," and the man performs oral sex on the woman. In a dream, Trevor and Amy have sex--his nude rear and her back are visible. Several close-ups of a realistic-looking naked female mannequin. Blood galore. A woman's kidney is removed, then eaten by a dog. When she tries to get away, the killer pulls apart her open wound and decapitates her. Characters are stabbed, bludgeoned, pickaxed, shot, knifed, electrocuted, and hanged. A fake dead dog hangs with its intestines hanging out, plus several dismembered plastic babies.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Beth Pratt
It's fairly obvious why the creators of Urban Legend would make a sequel: 1. To capitalize on the success of the first movie; 2. To push cinematic violence and gore to a new level. Whether or not they meet the first goal remains to be seen, but they can easily claim victory on the second point--even a seasoned horror movie fan hid her eyes during the revolting kidney-removal scene.
FINAL CUT blatantly borrows from just about every popular horror movie that's come before. Instead of Friday the 13th's hockey-masked killer, we have a fencing-masked psycho here. And the horror-movie-within-a-horror-movie idea was much more effectively done in Scream 3.
As Scary Movie demonstrated, spoofing tired plots and clichéd characters from the horror genre can be amusing. Unfortunately, these inexperienced actors take their shallow characters far too seriously and play them straight--which caused some teens to roar with laughter during some of the most "suspenseful" scenes.
Cinema buffs will appreciate the many movie references, including the campus security officer obsessed with Pam Grier movies, and the crew's nerdy special-effects experts who worship George Lucas. Many, however, won't be amused by poorly executed respects paid to Hitchcock classics such as Vertigo.
A seventeen-year-old slasher movie fanatic groaned during the requisite killer confession scene. He and his girlfriend agreed that the character's motivation for brutally murdering so many people was "incredibly lame and unbelievable," and that he had heard "better motivations for crime on Scooby-Doo." He pointed out that while there's never a compelling reason to kill, the motivation here was far less convincing than in the Scream trilogy or Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentFrequent sexual references, ranging from sexually transmitted diseases to porno movies. A couple on an airplane decide to enter the "mile high club," and the man performs oral sex on the woman. In a dream, Trevor and Amy have sex--his nude rear and her back are visible. Several close-ups of a realistic-looking naked female mannequin. |
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ViolenceBlood galore. A woman's kidney is removed, then eaten by a dog. When she tries to get away, the killer pulls apart her open wound and decapitates her. Characters are stabbed, bludgeoned, pickaxed, shot, knifed, electrocuted, and hanged. A fake dead dog ha |
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LanguageFrequent extreme profanity throughout. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSeveral characters drink and smoke. |
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