My last movie was a bland, forgettable film with some eye-candy and nothing else. This week's movie, the much-maligned second film in the Urban Legends franchise, HAS to better. It HAS to be. Right? Well, I guess we're about to find out, because here comes my SPOILER-heavy experience watching it.
The movie begins with a lot of thunder and lightning. Oh, and apparently, we're on a plane filled with partying college kids.. Cool. A young woman is nervously watching the rough weather, while a whiny-voiced nerd next to her is helpfully recreating the "gremlin on the plane's wing" moment from The Twilight Zone. Nice guy.
Another girl, who was in the slasher Valentine, goes off with her boyfriend to join The Mile High Club. Along the way, an elderly woman gives them the stink eye. Oh, and in the most awesome spoiled surprise ever, you can clearly see the message YOU'RE GOING DOWN written on the bathroom mirror, waaaay before you're supposed to. Nice.
Anyway, Nerd Boy sees a creepy male flight attendant staring at the rowdy students, and they make eye contact. That's when the Mile High Girl, whose boyfriend is, ummm, munching Down Under, finally sees the message on the wall. When she reads it out loud, her boyfriend happily agrees. Heh. She yanks her boyfriend's(Rob's) head up so that he can see the message, and they both quickly decide to get out of the bathroom as they feel the plane rapidly descending.
As they're still figuring out how to exit the toilet, the rest of the passengers get freaked out when breathing masks drop from the ceiling. Mile High Girl exits the restroom first, and sees all of the passengers slumped over. She assumes that they all just passed out, until the old lady she saw earlier slumps over in her seat, revealing a knife wedged in her back. Guess she's not sleeping.
The killer emerges with another bloodstained knife, and he and Mile High Girl face off for a moment or two. Fate intervenes, and the killer is knocked over by a runaway drink cart that comes sliding down the aisle. Rob finally emerges from the bathroom, and asks his girlfriend what's going on, then they both start running up the aisle.
In the small area the flight attendants use to prepare the snacks, they find Nerd Boy dead. The killer pops up again, so the couple decide to run to the front of the plane. Along the way, they discover a couple of female flight attendants strapped into their seats, brutally slaughtered. Ignoring reality, the couple easily slip into the cockpit and shut the door on the killer, locking it also.
The crew is dead as well. When the hell did this guy have time to commit all of these freakin' murders? As the killer attempts to bust open the door, Mile High Girl dumps the pilot out of his seat and decides to try to contact someone on the ground. She should just wait a second, she's heading right for them...
She puts on a headset, and just starts saying, "Mayday!" over and over again into the microphone. At the very same time, the killer gets in, so she screams even louder into the headset. Then a guy in sunglasses appears in the windshield, clinging to the rain-soaked glass. Mile High Girl shrieks, and he yells "Cut!"
Yeah. It was all just a movie set.
While the director continues screaming at the crew, the "rain" stops, and the plane stops shaking. Then he scolds the actress, Sandra, telling her that her character isn't supposed to be flying the plane. He also scolds a crew member named Vanessa(played by the lovely Eva Mendes), because she let a boom mike drop into one of the shots. As Vanessa commiserates with fellow crew member Amy , the director kisses up to the actor playing the killer, because he seems to have a stick up his ass. Oh, and Joey Lawrence is another crew member, "Graham", working with a scruffy guy referred to as "Scrote".
Using a megaphone, the director then threatens to kill Sandra if she doesn't do the scene right. He then has them set up to try another take. Hmmm. Is this an early hint about the killer? Probably not.
The heroine of our story, Amy, is next seen jogging. She's apparently the world's least-athletic runner, because the season changes from winter to spring in front of the campus as she's running toward the main building. As the movie resumes, the chairman of the film department is welcoming film students for the spring semester. See, I told you she ran slow! Thought I was kidding, didn't you?
Anyway, he delivers some grandiose, self-serving speech, then introduces a douchebag named Mr. Solomon to the students. The kids make fun of the staff as each teacher is introduced by Mr. Solomon, due to the fact that they're all a group of sad-sack has-beens. Then it's revealed that Amy is one of the small minority of film students who have yet to submit a "thesis film", a finished production that shows her skill as a film-maker put to the test. Heck, she hasn't even submitted an idea yet! She better hurry up, because at the end of each year, one lucky student wins a $15,000 prize known as The Hitchcock Award. The award more or less guarantees the recipient a future in Hollywood. From the rafters, Scrote is reading Solomon's speech into a microphone, and Solomon is repeating it word-for-word. Douche.
Um, it's winter again. WTF, man? Oh wait, Amy is walking across the campus...that explains it. By the time this movie ends, it could be decades later. Pray for my sanity, folks.
Amy gets frightened by a group of mother-flockin' birds that totally flock her up, then she gets a beam of light aimed right at her eyes. The light belongs to Reese, a member of the campus security staff. Reese! She was in the previous movie too, so I guess her character's presence is the connective tissue between both films. Awesome...I loved her goofy character in the first movie.
Okay, so Reese offers to give Amy a lift. She's probably seen how slow Amy walks. During the short drive across the campus, the women bond over a mutual love of Pam Grier movies. Then Reese suggests the events of the first UL film as Amy's thesis. Cute. She reveals that the murders at Pendleton were covered up, and she was fired for not agreeing to go along with the deception.
Amy enters the film library building, and walks into Solomon's office, where he is being slowly bored to death ny a lecture by one of the "legends" on the faculty. Amy gives Solomon her thesis, which is a slasher flick based on urban legends.Uhhhh....kind of "on the nose", isn't it?
Solomon likes it, but agrees with Amy's assessment that it needs to be given a definitive style. He suggests that it would work best as either a gore-heavy slasher flick, or as a more tension-filled psychological thriller, and she declares that it would have a bit of both. Solomon then compliments her on the idea, saying that it's "great". Wow, the writer sure had a healthy ego, huh?
That night, Travis(a hopeful director, as well as a friend of Amy) is on a date with a cute gal named Lisa. He orders drinks, and we see the killer spiking one of the drinks at the bar. Travis soon leaves, and Lisa unwittingly sips on the drink that was tampered with. She spurns the advances of a rather intense-looking stalker-type, and tries to leave, because she has a flight to take the next day. Of course, that's pretty much when the roofies kick in.
Lisa gets as far as the coat-check area, and then her eyes start to blur. Unable to properly see the number on her ticket, Lisa gropes around the coats--and that's when the killer leaps out of hiding and smothers her in a plastic sheet. Sounds dumb, I know, but it's a pretty decent jump-scare.
When Lisa wakes up, she's in a bathtub filled with ice. She sees a fresh-looking kidney in a dish next to a pair of bloody scissors, and finds a ragged, bleeding scar in her side. Lisa realizes that she's been made part of one of the most infamous urban legends ever told, and sees her abductor in another room, with his back to the frightened young woman.
Though she's really trying, Lisa can't quite make a quiet escape. She slips on the bloodstained floor, but still manages to shut the door and put a few obstacles in the way, to buy herself the time she needs to escape. Pretty smart thinking.
Or not. Lisa sees her purse on the floor, dumps the contents on the floor, and dials 911. While that also seems smart, she screws up big time by telling them about the kidney heist. The dispatcher informs her that he knows the urban legend, and hangs up. Lisa spies a window that could be a good escape route, but a dog outside convinces her to think otherwise.
She sees a different window, and decides to use that one for her exit. 2 things happen then: the killer gets into the bathroom, and the dog finds her hanging halfway out of the window. The killer reaches Lisa first, and tears open her surgical wound. She tries to hang onto some barbed wire, but that works out about as well as you'd figure it would. Making one last attempt to defend herself, Lisa tries to hit the killer with her hands, and breaks the glass in the window instead. The killer brings the jagged shards down on her neck, decapitating poor Lisa. As the dog contemplates how to eat a human head, the window opens one more time, and the killer lets the stray dog have her kidney too. Yum!
In the next scene, we go back to film school. Amy meets up with Sandra for lunch in the dining hall. There, she tells Sandra another urban legend, one I haven't heard before. Supposedly, before taking their finals, a group of students got together and had a midnight scream session, to alleviate tension.( Yeah, I'm sure the rest of the school appreciated that!) The story goes, that as the students screamed, the noise covered the sound of the screams of an actual murder victim.
As Amy reveals that the story is an urban legend, Sandra starts relating several stories involving bugs and other gross things found in food. Really? During lunch? Anyway, when Sandra asks for a role in the movie, Amy invites her to a late-night recording session for authentic-sounding screams. Gosh, I honestly have no idea what will happen next.
Amy is next seen walking past several recording/editing studios.The asswipe director from the great opening sequence is watching painful clips of Sandra trying to scream in a way that sounds terrified. She can't do it. In the next editing bay, Travis is watching a clip that sounds like a feminine hygiene ad. Behind Amy, someone walks into the corridor wearing the same snowjacket the killer from the first UL movie wore. Uh oh....is crazy Brenda back? Nope, it's just the 2 slackers who provided the "special effects" in the opening sequence.
Travis hears the commotion, and comes out to chat with Amy. When she asks how his film is coming along, Travis clams up a bit. Amy asks him to look at her script, and they make a date for Tuesday night. Fascinating. Considering that the only 2 films we've seen these students make so far are slasher movies, I'm betting that Travis isn't directing something based on a Jane Austen novel.
The the story switches gears to bring us to show us a hot-but-not-yet-famous Eva Mendes(Vanessa), and a not-famous-and-perhaps-never-will-be Joey Lawrence as Graham. Was Joey the one who always said "Whoa!" on that sitcom, or was that his brother Matthew? Wow, I sure do get easily distracted! Anyway, Vanessa is annoyed that Graham is always on his phone, so she brings up the urban legend that cell phones give you brain cancer. It turns out that they're at a storyboard/script meeting to discuss Amy's urban legend movie. Also there are Scrote(whose real name I'm still not sure about), Sandra, and the 2 effects/prop guys. Graham pompously tells Scrote to wash his car, and the poor guy does it.
Amy then shows the group another urban legend, involving a girl who has a fear of the dark. She sleeps with her dog in the room,and he licks her hand when she lets her arm hang off the side of the bed. The next morning, the woman finds her dog's corpse hanging on a shower rod, and a message written on the wall: HUMANS CAN LICK TOO.
As they continue to sit and chat, there's a pointless discussion over which is better, practical effects or digital effects, followed by a verbal attack on Amy by Toby, the student directing the airplane slasher seen at the start of the film. He thinks that she stole his genre, even though she tries to tell him how her film is different.
Back at one of the housing buildings, Amy finds Travis drunk and despondent. His film only earned a C minus, and Amy tells him that he deserved better. When he brings up the Hitchcock Award, Amy tells him that he's too talented to fail in Hollywood. Then, seeing Travis at his lowest, she asks him to help her find a new director of photography, since Toby abandoned the position 1 scene ago. He gives her a tip about a guy named Simon. Before she leaves, Amy tells Travis that everything will be okay. Yeah, right!
That evening, Amy is ready to shoot her first movie scene as a director. As she is greeted by a few cast and crew members, there's an accident on the set...Sandra is hit by a fallen light. Amy examines the wound on her scalp, then Sandra opens her eyes and says, "Gotcha!" Yeesh.
Amongst the giggling crew, Sandra tells Amy that Graham's father got her an audition for an episode of ER. Then they start setting up for the scene with the dead dog and the girl's hand getting licked by a killer. The dead dog prop is pretty realistic-looking, which just makes me wish even more that the movie scenes within the movie were an actual movie. How many times in 1 paragraph can I say "movie"? Movie. Movie, movie.
Anyway, an ominous man in black walks onto the set, just as they start filming. He introduces himself as Schorm, and says that Travis asked him to assist her with her film. Ah, okay, this is "Simon", the director of photography that Travis promised to get for Amy's horror movie. He then tries to seduce Vanessa, but it turns out that she's into women. Cool! So am I!
After that, the parking lot is deserted, but not for long. Sandra staggers outside, struggling to carry a dress and some other stuff to her car. Unfortunately, it appears that she may have locked herself out of the car.
Sandra trudges back to the set, and fumbles around for the interior lights. She finds herself on a set dressed up for a crime scene, complete with a strobing police light. As Sandra looks around for her keys, a shape under a red blanket begins moving. The killer eventually stands up, and attaches a microphone to a camera, which he then picks up to begin filming Sandra's murder.
Sandra is, of course, unable to see a tall figure dressed in a bright red blanket suddenly standing up. I know, I know, the killer's behind her...but wouldn't she still see or hear a sudden movement like that? Oh, and can we dispense with the whole "our victim looks in one direction long enough for the killer to move to a different position in the background" scene in every single frickin' horror movie too? That one never ceases to annoy me.
Anyway, the killer sneaks behind Sandra, and slashes her with a razor just as she finds her stupid keys. Then we see the rest of the small cast and crew watching the scenes they have of Sandra so far, giving the worst screams in the history of cinema. Simon even suggests that maybe they should make it a horror-comedy. They watch Sandra's character find her "cat" several times, and each take gets more and more horrible. I'll bet she took lesson's from the Jon Lovitz character Master Thespian.
As even Amy can't help laughing at the footage, the lights go out. After a few seconds, the projector starts up again, this time showing Sandra's murder. The murder is shown through the killer's camera, and everyone starts to wonder who filmed it, and why it's so realistic. Boy, these students are SMART!! Amy even runs up to the projection room to examine the film reel, but the killer has already taken it. Scrote, whose real name, I'm pretty sure is "PA Kevin", denies having seen anyone.
Dirk and Stan try to assure Amy that, as special effects guys, they know it's fake. Then there's another death, one that just happened: Travis just killed himself. Professor Solomon gathers the entire film class together, to give them the details of Travis' suicide. He supposedly blew his head off on a building rooftop. Amy looks to the side, and sees a mysterious figure slipping away from the crowd.
There's a small memorial for Travis, mostly attended by young women. One of the old has-beens gives Amy his condolences, then Graham approaches her. Being Graham, he tries hitting on her, even going so far as to tell her that if she plays along with him, his father will fund her movie entirely with his wealth. Graham calls Amy a hypocrite, and reveals that he knows that her father made movies as well. He also tells her that the only reason she's trying to be a filmmaker is because she needs to "save face". Then he walks away. Whoa!
As she walks by the campus tower, Amy briefly sees a light go off on one of the upper floors. Amy crosses under the police tape and finds the front entrance unlocked, so she enters. The lower floor is filled with statues covered in plastic. A figure runs past Amy, and she needs a fresh change of underwear. Oh wait, no, that was me. Good think I wore my brown trousers.
Amy, being a complete tool, remains rooted to her spot on the floor as the figure walks slowly in her direction. When he emerges from the plastic draped from the ceiling, the mystery figure is revealed to be....Travis!?!
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!
Oops, it's his never-mentioned "twin", Trevor. Was this movie written by folks who worked on daytime soaps? I'm willing to bet that it was. Either that, or it actually is Travis, and he's the killer. Either way, this twist is pathetic. Trevor asks Amy some questions about his brother, then starts to walk away when he doesn't like her answers.
Amy stops him, and discovers that Trevor thinks that Travis was murdered. Shocker. He begs her not to tell anyone that she saw him, then walks away again. If he isn't Travis, he's a dumbass, because he walks right past two students, running the risk of being identified. Considering that he claims not to know who were or weren't friends of his brother, that seems pretty damned stupid.
The movie brings us back to the set of Amy's movie. 2 actors are doing the "midnight scream" scene, and the filming has gone late. Exhausted, Amy tells everyone how great they're doing, and to go home until tomorrow. Vanessa pulls her aside, and asks Amy if anything is wrong. Amy doesn't mention the whole "Travis had a twin brother" thing, but mentions that she needs volunteers to record a loud group scream to loop into the scene they just shot. Vanessa begs off, claiming that she's too tired. Graham and Simon also decline to stay.
As Simon walks away, PA Kevin admires his camera, but Simon warns him not to touch it. Simon steps outside, and it looks like the entire campus teleported to London. Simon trudges down the sidewalk, unaware that the killer is following him at a pretty close distance.
There's a sequence now that's alternating between Simon and Amy. While he's walking, unaware that the killer is right behind him, she's getting a group together to record an epic scream in a sound booth. As the screamers start to get obnoxiously loud, Simon pauses outside the building to smoke, and you can even hear the scream faintly from where he is.
The killer whacks Simon in the face, then uses the camera as a weapon. The screams continue to drown out Simon's cries for help, and the killer uses his own camera to bash Simon's skull in. The screams stop, and Amy catches some of the murder in her sensitively-tuned boom mike. She drops all of her equipment, and rushes outside to see if she can save her director of photography. She misses seeing some bloody evidence in the snow, but does notice a handful of security cams in that location. I guess it's time to revisit Reese.
Reese, naturally, is a terrible security guard, so it should come as no surprise when I tell you that she's using the security monitors to watch one of her favorite movies, something featuring the character Foxy Brown. Amy convinces Reese to let her take a look at the timeframe showing the campus while the recording session was taking place. Reese warns her, though, to bring the tapes back immediately if she finds something suspicious.
Amy gets some time in an editting booth, and sees Simon get killed exactly when the scream session was taking place. She gathers up her stuff to find Reese, then hears an odd noise. She turns on the lights outside the booth, and nearly has a heart attack when she sees the killer wearing a freaky mask shaped like a crescent moon.
She assumes at first that it's Stan, one of the effects guys. But when he creepily tries to get to the door at the same time that she does, Amy locks it. Mzoonface then ducks past the door, drawing her forward to try to keep an eye on him. When she leans forward, the killer smashes the soundproof glass, and is now wearing his familiar fencing outfit. Amy tries to open the other exit, but it's jammed, so she instead kills the power with an emergency hatchet. When the killer steps into the sound booth, Amy ducks behind a table, runs past him, and quickly scurries away.
Amy watches from another hiding place as the killer walks around the booth, looking for her. He sees that he's standing next to a large piano, and tests each key, one note at a time. Want to guess what object Amy's hiding under?
She throws an object at some chimes, and makes her escape when the sudden sound and movement distracts the killer. Amy manages to get outside, but theb killer chases her out of the building, and follows close behind. She gets down to the lake or pond used by the rowing team, trips, and falls into the icy water. As Amy swims over to the side of a nearby building, the killer picks up his pace to see if he can spot her in the water before she gets away.
Amy, now hiding beneath a grating, hears the killer moving around looking for her. When gets to a point directly over the grating, he and Amy stare at each other.Then the killerlifts open the grating, and the chase resumes under the campus. Oops, no I guess the killer is trying to outrun her to the exit from above. My bad.
Amy gets to the end of the first corridor, and nearly gets knocked off of her feet by Reese, who saw her running and came to get her. Unfortunately, Reese never saw her attacker, and the killer apparently took the security tapes.. Reese feels bad for Amy, but tells her that without solid proof, no one would ever start an investigation.
Once home, Amy calls Trevor and asks him to meet again with her. The following day, Amy tells Trevor that she now believes that Sandra's murder was real, and that Travis was murdered too. When Amy mentions calling the cops, but Trevor once again advises against it. He tells Amy that he's had trouble with the law in the past, but is now tryig to change his ways. When Amy opens up for the umpteenth time about her dad's suicide, she decides that perhaps the killer is one of the students competing for the Hitchcock Award. Wow, she finally realized what most of us likely figured out when the award was first mentioned. Someone give her a cookie!
Trevor asks Amy where her next scene is being filmed, and she mentions a closed-up theme park on the edge of town. He tells her that he will try to hide there, in order to try to ambush the killer when he tries to strike again. When she hesitates, Trevor asks her to trust him.
Amy is next seen going for a jog, as the murders and the list of suspects weigh heavy on her mind. As the fencing mask is shown, each person's face is superimposed over it, usually saying something inane. The scene goes nowhere, and the next time we see Amy, she and Vanessa are doing a storyboard for the sequence they're going to film at the amusement park. Solomon admires the artwork, and asks them to tell him the urban legend.
It's another one I've never heard of, but it sounds interesting. It's about a carnival in town, but it's not like others. It has a version of the usual Tunnel of Love ride that is littered with body parts. The next morning, the carnival has left, and several local children are missing, to replenish the decorations at the Tunnel ride.
Vanessa makes light of the fact that the ride they're filming in doesn't look scary in the least, and then Dirk and Stan, the effects guys, arrive with props. They declare that the silly ride can be made scary in 3 hours, and are told that they only have one. As Amy watches them walk into the tunnel, one of them does some eerie whistling.
Inside, Stan yells down to Derek for a status report. Derek has been hard at work getting the electricity working for several mannequins, while Stan is above him on another level, happily dressing the set with morbid props. Outside, Amy gets pissed when Graham reveals that he asked more people to join the crew, without asking her first.
Stan and Derek horse around with various body part props, then Trevor shows up and lets Amy know he's there. To get some alone time with him, Amy tells everyone to take an hour to go grab a meal. The cast and crew gratefully leave. Trevor starts to move from his hiding position.
Stan and Derek haven't heard about the lunch break, so they're still testing the equipment. Amy calls them on a walkie-talkie, and they offer to show her their work so far. Amy agrees, but looks worried. They tell Amy how to start up the ride, and she hops into a mining car after following their instructions.
Stan tells Derek that Amy's on the way, and hurries to adjust some of the props. He fails to notice one of the miners slightly moving. It turns its head, revealing the fencing mask to the audience. Stan fiddles around with more props, and the killer gets behind him, and taps his shoulder. When Stan turns and sees him, the killer strikes his noggin with his pickaxe. Then he waits for Stan to grab a metal bar for support, and electrocutes him by sending charges through the bar.
Derek climbs the ladder up to Stan's level, and comes face-to-mask with the killer, who bashes a couple of his fingers pretty badly...he won't be playing piano for awhile, let's put it that way. Derek attempts to go back down the enclosed ladder, and the killer follows. Amy is completely unaware of the killer up ahead, of course, and admires the gruesome decorations that Derek and Stan have lined the tunnel with.
She comes to the end of the ride at roughly the same time that Derek gets off of the ladder. Inagony because of his wounded fingers, Derek weakly crawls away from the killer, but it's too late to escape. The killer corners Derek, then pushes him into a fusebox, and his corpse dances like a cockroach on a hot frying pan.
The power goes out, stranding Amy on the track. She assumes that it's a joke at first, but exits the cart after nothing turns back on. She calls down to the effects guys, then descends the enclosed ladder herself.
It doesn't take long to find a flashlight, then Derek's corpse. Amy runs back to the ladder, but narrowly escapes being spotted by the killer. In a clever and suspenseful bit, Amy hides behind the ladder enclosure, putting her mere inches from the killer's back. As soon as he's lower than her, Amy slides around to the inside of the cage again, and swiftly ascends the ladder. Of course, the killer hears the commotion, and starts to climb up after her again.
Amy decides to run back through the tunnel, and the killer stops for a moment to watch her retreat, before heading behind the scenery to try to get to her. When Amy descends some stairs, the killer grabs her ankle from behind the stairs and sends her sailing to the floor. She manages to get back on her feet and running again, and finally gets outside.
She sprints down the street--in fog, no less--then does something only a bonehead would do: Amy stops in her tracks, and turns around. Reese then makes her jump by getting in front of her. That leads to Reese calling in the cops, who take the corpses and tape off the crime scene. 2 cops behave like complete dickheads toward her and Reese, and Amy cuts their questions short.
Back at her place, Amy has a confrontation with Trevor over his so-called "protection", which apparently consisted of letting the killer have at her. Trevor claims that he was following Graham, and didn't get back to the set until after the police had arrived. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I think we may have our killer. Heck, he may even be Travis, faking his death to claim victims easier.
Amy must have been dropped as a baby, because she buys his alibi and fills him in on what happened in the tunnel ride. She relaxes when she decides it wasn't Graham, but then Trevor tells her that Graham slipped away somehow. Uh-huh.
Suddenly, Amy has a possible revelation. She remembers that Stan and Dirk were only sophomores. Going with that logic, she decides that it wouldn't make sense for the killer to target them. Uh, Queen Dumbass, they were crew members on your movie, which makes them just as much targets as ANY cast and crew working on Hitchcock Award-eligible movies.
Anyway, Amy decides that her dumb suspicions over the choice of victims is worth looking into, but Trevor convinces her to get some sleep first. He gets her to relax on the bed, then spoons up behind her to get some cute-girl booty acti...uh, I mean he spoons her to also get some well-deserved rest.
Heh, it turns out my sarcastic comment was right on the nose! They decide to do the ol' horizontal bop. Sadly, we see more of his ass than hers. Man, I need to watch more "old school" slashers...these post-Scream slashers are waaaaaay too politically correct. Well, whatever...as they make love, Trevor takes a knife out from a hiding place, then plunges it into a pretty gosh-darned surprised Amy.
Aw, it was just a dream sequence. Amy sits up in the bed. It's morning, and Trevor has left, probably to post all of the pics and videos he took of her on Facebook. Oh, wait...she slept in her clothes. So even THAT didn't happen. It's like watching a movie produced by The Vatican.
Hmmmm, I guess it's not morning, because when Amy looks out of her window, it's darkout. Also, there's a light that goes on in the building where Travis killed himself. Amy runs to the tower, because apparently, she just never learns. By the time she reaches the top floor, Amy is out of breath and limping. I know the feeling--I get the same way after watching these things.
She assumes that it's Trevor waiting for her, but it's not. It's Vanessa, the hot lesbian. Giggity!
Vanessa claims that Amy sent her a note, asking for a rendezvous. When Amy tells her that someone else sent the note, Vanessa gets upset and Amy starts looking for the killer to emerge. It doesn't take long: a corpse falls from somewhere above them. It happens pretty fast, and even rewinding the damn thing, I'm not sure who it is. Oh, and as all of this is happening, Reese is just getting back to her security monitors as the killer begins the next chase.
As Amy tries to get herself and Vanessa to safety, Vanessa demands an explanation. Instead of answering her friend, Amy sees how close the killer is, and off they go again. The way Amy runs, I expect the killer to catch up in about 3 seconds.
Reese finally sees the alarm flashing, just as the girls arrive at the top of the tower. They find what appears to be a closet, and hide inside. Of course, it only works as a hiding place if they don't call attention to themselves. So they decide to get chatty.
As expected, the killer finds them and snatches Vanessa away, before slamming the door shut, and jamming the lock with a screwdriver. Screaming, Amy accidentally pulls a switch for the lights in the closet, and sees a pile of body parts in there to keep her company. To be more specific, she finds Simon and Sandra, with some assembly required.
Amy manages to force the door open, but finds Vanessa hanging from a rope tied to the giant bell in the tower. She runs back outside, just as Reese arrives. And Trevor. Would anyone else like to just randomly pop up? Anyone?
Trevor apologizes for leaving Amy unguarded, but tells her he found a clue. Jinkies! He tells Amy that, pnce he removed her name from the cast and crew, he found a common link between the rest of the group: All of them worked on the thesis film Travis created. They find the film and watch it, for more clues.
It's a stinker. But Amy DOES find a clue. The movie was spliced onto the credits Travis created. That implies that somebody else threw together a bunch of outtakes. At least that explains his low grade. But who sabotaged his movie?
They assume it was Toby, just to be an ass-hat. Then Toby is seen driving drunk, putting lyris to the theme music from Gone With the Wind. He brakes suddenly for a car in the middle of the road, but it's the killer....say WHAAAAT?!?
It's actually Amy, but she has a gun. Wow, I am more confused than a blonde trying to decide which sock goes on her left foot, and which goes on her right. Oh,wait...Travis is also there, holding a flare. They kidnap Toby.
The take Toby somewhere isolated, and handcuff him to a chair. Before they can question Toby, Professor Solomon walks in on the makeshift interrogation. As he does a double-take upon seeing Travis, Graham also pops up, albeit in a hiding spot.
Solomon asks Amy about the gun, and she admits that it's only a prop. Then Travis, pretending to be Trevor, tells the professor that Toby stole "his" movie. Unfortunately, Travis slips up by saying that Toby mixed "his" sound, and Toby clarifies that Travis preferred to do all of his own sound edits by himself. Toby even says that Travis only gave him a film credit to given him enough points to graduate.
Toby asks Solomon for help, and the teacher shoots him, send the chair and Toby soaring onto a movie set. Solomon confesses to blowing Travis' head off, and demands to know who Trevor actually is. Graham's phone goes off, and Trevor uses the distraction to wrestle with Solomon over the gun.
Sadly, Solomon keeps the gun. Amy tries hiding on another set, and Graham almost leaves, but decides to try and rescue Amy. Whoa! Solomon makes Trevor walk in front of him, and Amy sees Graham signal her to stay put. She, of course, stands up. When she gets Solomon talking, we finally get to hear what the motive was for the killings.
Solomon ended up losing the Hitchcock back when he was a student, to some dude named Chip. The deciding vote was cast against Solomon, by none other than Amy's father. Trapped in a mediocre teaching job, Solomon decided to steal the film Travis made, and replace it with the crap Amy and Trevor watched. He then began kiling everyone on Amy's set, merely to distract everyone from what he was doing.
Speaking of distractions, Graham uses Solomon's confession to sneak up behind him and bash him with a folding chair. Being a movie prop, it has almost no effect, so Solomon shoots Graham while he and Trevor grapple for control of the gun. It gets dropped and slides across the set, and the 2 men fight using whatever props happen to be nearby. Ay yi yi.
Thank the heavens, Reese comes to the rescue. Quickly assessing his chances, Solomon decides to try to convince Reese that Amy and Trevor were trying to murder him. Reese tells Amy to drop her gun, and she complies. Then Reese tells everyone to get off the set. Feeling pretty confident, Solomon blames Amy for the murders, and tells the security guard that it was Amy she saw one night lurking around.
Oops. It turns out that Reese had kept that to herself. Caught in his lie, Solomon kicks Reese's gun out of her hand, then punches her as she reaches for the gun with the gold trim. A bunch of prop guns also end up on the floor, and everyone goes looking for any of the real guns.
Amy gets the gold gun, and Solomon and she exchange taunts. When Solomon tries to get Amy to fire at him, she hesitates, so he lunges at her. The gun goes off, and it turns out that Amy fired it into Soloomon at close range. Then Toby and Graham turn up alive and begging for medical help, and Reese delivers a corny line from one of her favorite blaxploitation flicks. Sheesh.
In the following scene, Trevor accepts the Hitchcock on behalf of his brother. Scrote, watching from the rafters, pulls out a rifle with a telescopic sight, and aims at Trevor. Reese spots Scrote before he pulls the trigger, and takes him down with several shots., he falls, not to his death, but onto an inflated stunt pad.
Everyone who survived is there: Graham is Amy's agent; Scrote, as we saw, is an actor; and Toby, who was such an ass, is now doing Scrote's old job of being a lackey. Oh, and Amy is a big-time director, with Trevor at her side. Everyone lives happily ever after...
Well, with one exception. Solomon is seen in a hospital for the criminally disturbed. As he sits in his wheelchair looking catatonic, a nurse starts to push him down the corridor, telling him that they have a lot in common, and much to discuss. The nurse turns out to be Brenda, the killer from the first UL movie. As the credits roll, she wheels Solomon down the longest hallway in movie history. THE END
Whew! I know, I know, I'm 2 weeks late. Last week, I was hit hard by an infection, and spent most of it in bed. Literally, I slept something like 3 days straight. This past week, I had a lot to catch up on, not just this blog. I'm trying to double up on my movies, to make up for that week, so we'll see how that goes. The next slasher is something called Venom, so hopefully it's good.
Oh, and what has Urban Legends: Final Cut taught me?
-That I can get tons of mileage from jokes about Joey Lawrence. Whoa!
-Killers are often caught because their plans are waaaay too complicated.
-Taking a tragedy that killed many of your friends, and using it as a stepping-stone to fame, is never in bad taste.
See ya!
