Urban Legend is a 1998 slasher film directed by Jamie Blanks, written by Silvio Horta, and starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, and Tara Reid, and is the first installment in the Urban Legend film series. Its plot focuses on a series of murders on the campus of a private New England university, all of which appear to be modeled after popular urban legends. In addition to its younger cast, the film features supporting performances from Robert Englund, Loretta Devine, John Neville, and Brad Dourif.
Filmed in Toronto in the spring of 1998, Urban Legend was released in the United States on September 25, 1998. It grossed $72.5 million worldwide on a budget of $14 million, and received generally negative reviews from critics. The film has been credited by both cinema and folklore scholars as being one of the first major films to redistribute the urban legends and folklore depicted within it to the public.
It was followed by two sequels: Urban Legends: Final Cut, which was released theatrically in 2000, and the direct-to-video film Urban Legends: Bloody Mary in 2005. In February 2020, a reboot of the film was announced to be in development, to be written and directed by Colin Minihan.
Plot[]
Pendleton University student Michelle Mancini is decapitated by a stranger in the backseat of her car during a rainstorm. Meanwhile, at the campus coffee shop, student Parker regales friends Natalie and Brenda with a story about a massacre that occurred in Stanley Hall, an abandoned dormitory. Journalism student Paul discredits this as an urban legend. News of Michelle's murder quickly spreads the following day, but the Dean Adams and campus police officer Reese seem determined to bury the story. Damon, a jokester fraternity member, attempts to console Natalie, who is notably disturbed by the murder. In Damon's parked car at a bluff, Natalie rejects his sexual advances. When Damon goes outside to urinate, he is attacked by an assailant in a hooded parka who hangs him from a tree. Natalie flees to retrieve help, but Damon's body and car have disappeared when she returns with Reese. Parker and his girlfriend Sasha assure Natalie that Damon has pranked her.
Later, Natalie's goth roommate Tosh is strangled to death by the killer while Natalie sleeps. Natalie finds Tosh's body in the morning, along with a message scrawled in blood on the wall. Distraught, Natalie confides to Brenda that Michelle was her high school friend, and that the two had received probation for causing a fatal car accident after driving with their headlights turned off and pursuing the first driver who flashed them. Paul meanwhile investigates local urban legends, and discovers that the Stanley Hall massacre was in fact real, and Professor Wexler, a professor of American folklore, was its only survivor.
Dean Adams is murdered in the campus parking garage, and Reese later finds Wexler's office in disarray and covered in blood. Meanwhile, Natalie, Brenda, and Sasha attend a fraternity party coinciding the massacre's 25th anniversary. During the party, Parker is incapacitated by the killer in the bathroom, who murders him by forcing pop rocks and bathroom chemicals down his throat. Meanwhile, Sasha leaves the party to host her late-night talkshow at the campus radio station. During the broadcast, she and her assistant are attacked by the killer, and her screams are played live on air; the fraternity partygoers assume it is a prank referencing the massacre, but Natalie fears Sasha is in danger. She rushes to the station, where she witnesses the killer murder Sasha with an axe.
Natalie soon finds Paul and Brenda on campus. Paul, convinced that Wexler is responsible, escorts them away in his car. They stop at a gas station, and while Paul is inside, Natalie and Brenda find Wexler's mutilated body in the trunk. The two women flee through the woods back toward campus as Paul pursues them. They become separated, and Natalie flags down the university's janitor passing by in his truck. He picks her up, but their car is forced off the road by the killer, who pursues them in a separate vehicle. The crash kills the janitor, but Natalie leaves unscathed and flees on foot.
While passing Stanley Hall, Natalie hears Brenda's screams from inside. In the building, she finds her friend's corpses, along with an apparently dead Brenda outstretched on a bed; however, Brenda knocks Natalie unconscious moments later. When Natalie comes to, Brenda reveals herself as the killer, enacting revenge for her fiancé David Evans, the fatality in the road accident Natalie and Michelle caused. Brenda attempts to remove Natalie's kidney, but is thwarted when Reese arrives and holds Brenda at gunpoint. Brenda manages to stab Reese with a switchblade, and Paul comes upon the scene. Natalie gains control of the gun, and shoots Brenda, who falls out a window. Natalie and Paul leave to get help for Reese. As they drive away, the two talk about how this will later be an urban legend and all the facts will be misconstrued. Paul asks, "Well if this is an urban legend, where is the twist?" Brenda then appears in the back seat and attacks them with an axe. Paul crashes the car on a bridge, causing Brenda to go through the windshield and into the river below.
Later, a group of students at a different university have recounted the events of Brenda's killing spree, during which they say that her body was never discovered. Most of them disbelieve the tale with the exception of one young woman, who is revealed to be Brenda. She claims that the story was incorrectly told, and begins to tell them "how the story really goes."