During the brutal third act the killer delivers a PowerPoint (iconic) explaining her motive while preparing to act out the “stolen kidney” urban legend with Natalie. In the end we learn this is because the killer, (tap to reveal spoiler) Brenda, is angry that her fiance was killed when Natalie and Michelle, revealed to be high school friends, recklessly engaged in a high speed chase with him while playing a “prank” based on the urban legend that running someone off the road after they flash their headlights is a gang initiation rite. Professor Wexler (Robert Englund) lectures about urban legends. The students and faculty at Pendleton begin to die off at the hands of a hooded killer who frames each kill as an urban legend. Jared Leto plays a real Gale Weathers type student journalist, Paul Gardner, who will do anything for a story and Robert Englund (of Freddy Krueger fame) has a small role as Professor William Wexler. Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt) and her friend Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart) discuss the rumor that there was once a massacre on an abandoned dorm at their school with frat boys Damon (Joshua Jackson) and Parker (Michael Rosenbaum). The plot follows a group of students at the fictional Pendleton University following the opening character’s death. The character’s knowledge of urban legends adds a layer of believability and intrigue to what is otherwise a familiar “kids get slaughtered at college” movie.
Urban explorer plot summary movie#
In Urban Legend it isn’t horror movie tropes, but urban legends that the killer is acting out in their rampage. The film is one of many that owes its lineage to Scream (1996), the first meta slasher in which the characters are aware of movie tropes and navigate their lives accordingly. Urban Legend‘s opening is a play on the “killer in the backseat” urban legend. Because she did not heed his warning (and as we find out later, due to her past misdeeds) the killer in the backseat murders her as she drives away, singing the verse from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Ecclipse of the Heart”: Turn around. Expectations are cleverly subverted when the creepy gas station attendant turns out to be a good Samaritan wishing to warn the scene’s protagonist that there is someone hiding in the backseat of her car. The very first scene plays on one of the most popular urban legends of all time: the man in the backseat. Urban Legendis a 1998 teen slasher film that is especially fun to watch because it re-enacts or references so many urban legends that the audience is familiar with.
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