Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)
Genre fans probably will get a kick out of this cheesy new film,
opening today. It’s a sort-of sequel to the minor 1998 hit “Urban Legend,”
also about a serial killer working a college campus where the students are
really dumb when it comes to figuring out why their peers keep disappearing
amid buckets o’ blood.
“Final Cut,” set in the stark academia of fictional Alpine
University, brings back only the playfully funny Loretta Devine as the
campus cop, Reese. A couple of gory jolts aside, she pretty much steals the
show.
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The plot of film students’ making their individual opuses is
clever, giving screenwriters Paul Harris Boardman and
Scott Derrickson plenty of opportunity to satirize college kids and the
tedious process of moviemaking itself.
Who, besides film students, could be more self-aggrandizing and
ego-driven while also being forced to share classroom equipment, grub for
props or create slapdash sets?
“Final Cut” is intense. A decapitation during which a dog is fed
the victim’s entrails is only the start of a killing spree with a high
hemoglobin count.
Predictably, just one student, perky Amy Mayfield (Jennifer
Morrison), is even remotely aware of strange goings-
on as she works on her own film about a serial killer. As in all dopey
horror movies, things squeak and bump alarmingly; there are mysterious power
shutdowns, a full moon behind a veil of wind-swept clouds and shadowy forms
that lurk and occasionally leap.
The heroine stupidly ventures alone into the night to check out
suspicious noises or suggestions of strange events. The killer is
seemingly everywhere and tends to pop up wearing a fencer’s mask of mesh,
as one by one the student body on the isolated campus shrinks. The idea
for viewers is to try to not see the illogic in any of it as they crane for
the next bloodbath. A finale exposes the killer in a theme park
mine-train attraction.
Fellow students are played by relative unknowns: Eva Mendes as a brash
lesbian, Jessica Cauffiel as a screechy wannabe actress, Marco Hofschneider
as an arrogant European cinematographer and Hart Bochner as the devoted
professor.
Matthew Davis plays the handsome stud who seems to suddenly have
a twin brother after he dies in the tower of a campus building. One minute
Amy beds down with the brother, and the next she has a nightmare that he’s
about to rub her out with a dagger while they make love. Not safe sex, so to
speak.
– Advisory: This movie contains graphic violence, sexual references
and strong language.
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E-mail Peter Stack at pstack@sfchronicle.com.