Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

"Urban Legends: Final Cut" is about as good or as bad as you'd expect it to be. A sequel to 1998's teen-slasher flick, "Urban Legend," your enjoyment of this film is hinged solely on how you view the original. Personally, I felt the first movie was kind of flat and dull. Some interesting elements, but overall, not the best of the late 90's slasher craze. Enter "Final Cut." This film, on the other hand, is a solid little slasher with a similar mindset to that of the 80's slasher era. It hardly has the smarmy, self-referential winks to the camera that it's peers in "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" had and despite some flaws, is a fun way to burn a couple of hours.

Directed by John Ottman – who is primarily known for his work as a composer – and featuring a surprisingly extensive cast that includes Hart Bochner, Eva Mendes, Anthony Anderson and Joseph "Whoa!" Lawrence, this legend revolves around a film school where students are competing for a prestigious award. The Hitchcock award, to be exact. When innocent Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) decides to make a movie loosely based on the events of the first film, her crew finds themselves slowly being picked off one by one by a killer sporting perhaps some of the most ridiculous garbs yet: a fencing mask and a black rubber slicker. As in the first, he uses a few classic urban legends to accommodate his dirty deeds, but like most villains in sequels, he gets lazy and some of his kills are just straight-forward and messy.

Surprisingly grisly and gory (especially in the case of the first victim, who had no relevance to the rest of the film to begin with), "Final Cut" is more cheap fun than anything. Although Ottman puts on a good show, his references to Hitchcock himself hardly mean that there is any genuine suspense to be found here. Instead, like the movies it subtly pays homage to – such as "Friday The 13th" and "My Bloody Valentine" – this little sequel is simply a fun, down and dirty little romp that forgets it's a sequel and goes for the gusto. It's not an amazing film by any stretch of the imagination, but far less pretentious than other films of it's era, and certainly a mind-numbing good time for genre fans who aren't afraid to slum it a little bit with fare such as this. Fun to sit down with a beer and a pizza, nothing worth taking too seriously, and certainly better than the first flick.