Ever make one of those decisions in life, that at first seems like it’s going to be a good call, and then five minutes after you make the choice, you realize what a horrible mistake you made?
Well, that’s pretty much the case when my brother and I stumbled upon the Urban Legends: Bloody Mary film. We picked it out days before we actually got together to watch it, and we were actually pretty excited to see it. Having seen both other Urban Legends films and thoroughly enjoying those two, we really actually thought that this one would be just as good. We were horribly, horribly wrong and I’m here to warn you of our mistake.
So, unlike the other two Urban Legends films which fall more into the slasher genre (which, if you know me, is basically the part of the horror genre that truly means something to me and that I pride myself on being well-versed in) this film doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. Do you remember back in high school how so many people wanted desperately to fit in and would try on different identities, just hoping something would stick? Well, that’s kind of how this film is. It tries on a few different genres, but nothing ever sticks.
On the surface (and especially if you watch the trailer), Urban Legends: Bloody Mary seems like your run of the mill teenage-slasher flick. And it does have those elements. But then, not really. It tried to be a who-dunit, a classic ghost story, a supernatural thriller, and a revenge film. It is not successfully any of these things.
So, here’s the deal. Back in the late ‘60s, at the prom, some jocks tried to drug their prom dates so they can have their way with them. Ew, right? That’s enough to make me want to put this film away right then and there. But, okay. Moving on. One of the girls, Mary Banner, escapes from the jocks and gets back inside the school. She is eventually found by one of the boys andthey have a confrontation. The boy hits her, Mary hits her head on the table as she falls down from the blow, and the boy panics that he has killed Mary. So he locks her body up in a box he finds on the floor. And there’s the groundwork for the revenge film.
Over 30 years later, some high school girls are at a sleepover talking about the Bloody Mary urban legend. They also discuss an article that the main girl, Samantha, wrote exposing the antics of the current football players at the same school that Mary Banner attended. After playing Bloody Mary, the three girls disappear, and are found a day later with no memory of what happened. It becomes obvious that it was a horrible prank to get revenge on Samantha for the article she wrote for the school newspaper. The girls don’t know what happened to them; if they were raped or not.
The rest of the film is about those responsible for the disappearance of Samantha being killed in ways of other urban legends. Samantha and her brother David spend the film trying to find out what’s going on, and Samantha, out of nowhere and for no reason at all, starts having visions of what happened to Mary Banner. She also is conveniently able to find one of the other women who were drugged that night (Grace), who helps her try to solve the murders. And that is pretty much all there is to the story.
What was so wrong with it? Let’s start with the horrible acting. All the characters were generic, stereotypical, and had absolutely no depth or point. The film does seem to try to take things from other, better, popular horror films, but it doesn’t play out as well as it does in those films. Some of the plot seemed ripped right from a Final Destination movie. The deaths are so over-the-top elaborate and happen so rapidly following each other that, with so little plot in between, it has the feel of a Final Destination film, for sure. There is one death in particular that is really, really ridiculous and just made me roll my eyes. And the dialogue is trying too hard to sound as “meta” as a Scream movie.
There’s actually a girl defending boys who attacked innocent girls in it. I mean, really?
The film gets confusing because it tries too many methods of killing and makes it unclear who’s responsible for the murders.Why are there so many different killing methods? Death itself? A ghost? An actual, human man?
And the worst is the way the film makes a pathetic attempt at having a twist. A stupid, pointless, excuse for a twist. Anyone could have seen it coming. And I say that as someone who never finds twists predictable.
The verdict? Don’t ever, ever waste any time watching this one. I’ve made this review a little longer, so as to save you the trouble of having to watch it. I usually try to end on a positive note, and find something of value in every film, but this one? It’s not even slightly enjoyable. My brother walked out on me before we even got halfway through it. After seeing this movie, I began to question a little why it is that I love horror films so much. I’m not even kidding.
