Urban Legend (1998)

Until the 1990’s, horror movies were typically the genre that people breaking into the movie business often times got their start. Every now and then an established actor would take a role in a horror movie to spice up their career or simply because they thought it would be fun. When the 1990’s came around, young actors who already had something of a reputation began starring together in ensemble pieces. Typically these were actors who currently were in different shows on the same network; the film “Urban Legends” is a great example of both of these styles of casting. It’s a fun film that tries to be like “Scream” but attempts to find its approach to being clever. As always, sequels followed but the original remains the best of the series. There are enough scares to keep the viewer interested, a decent story line, the characters and the actors are ok, and the film quality is great.

College students are being killed one by one in various ways that resemble different urban legends. Is someone trying to prove that they are more than legends? Is the Stanley Hall massacre, the college’s own urban legend, true and is the anniversary going to come in to play in the story? Who’s the real killer, who isn’t the killer?

Great tag line – It happened to someone who knows someone you know…You’re next!

Cursed (2005)

Sadly, not every werewolf movie Grade A material. Some are actually quite horrible and should be avoided and “Cursed” is such an example. Directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson, the pair that created the film “Scream” clearly didn’t have the right chemistry this time around. I’ve read that that there were numerous reshoots and script changes demanded by the studio executives, but if the film was worth making in the first place, then I believe that these demands wouldn’t have been given in the first place. Now it I should say that Wes Craven is a director with a long history of creating both hits and utter failures so it shouldn’t be surprising that this was one of them. It doesn’t help that none of the actors seemed to give a damn about their work in this film except for Jesse Eisenberg. The movie was filled with actors that teens at the time loved and that was apparently good enough for Craven.  Another issue with this film is that it was way too predictable so it leaves the viewer with nothing to anticipate. Finally, the werewolves themselves look horrid and the transformation scenes are rendered in outdated CGI.

Ellie and Jimmy are siblings who hit a large creature and another car while driving home one night. They get out their car to see if the other car is alright only to see its driver killed before they are attacked. They manage to survive the attack and go home, where Jimmy starts to research werewolves since that’s what he thinks attacked them. The rest of the movie revolves around the two dealing with their their condition and finding out who to break their curse. It includes high school bullies and a cute girl for Jimmy, and a noncommittal boyfriend and his various ex’s for Ellie.