Alpine University film student Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) needs to start her senior project but she’s stymied by a case of screenwriter’s block. Then a chance encounter with the new campus cop (Loretta Devine the only link to the original “Urban Legend”) gives her an idea: She’ll make a film about a serial killer who slays college students in ways related to urban legends. Needless to say her cast and crew members (Joseph Lawrence Eva Mendez Jessica Cauffiel) start to disappear in a series of bizarre and mysterious incidents. And yes the killer is the person you would least suspect but only because he/she lacks a plausible motive.
Morrison (“Stir of Echoes”) never finds the right mix of vulnerability naïveté and attitude to play the slasher flick damsel-in-distress-turned-heroine. (And she’s never in any real peril.) Sorely missing are the outrageous performances that Rebecca Gayheart Danielle Harris and Julian Richings provided in the original “Urban Legend” — the supporting players shackled to tired Hollywood clichés and a lackluster story never get to exercise their dramatic talents.
Freshman director John Ottman struggles with an already sputtering script by Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson. Apparently the muse of over-the-top schlock horror blessed the first 15 minutes of the film then succumbed to spontaneous human combustion. With the exception of a mildly amusing “Blair Witch” cinéma-vérité parody the balance of the film generates neither thrill nor swill.
