An urban legend is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them. The term is often used to mean something akin to an “apocryphal story.” Like all folklore, urban legends are not necessarily false, but they are often distorted, exaggerated, or sensationalized over time. Out of all the urban legends my fav have always been the ones that focus on horror. These are the legends we all know, you know like the classic axe murderer in the backseat, alligators in the sewers, or being buried alive. Today I get the treat to review one such film on Blu……….. Urban Legend.
Urban Legend was released back in 1998 but it is a fresh new catalog title on Blu-ray. The movie begins with a bravura opening sequence featuring Natasha Gregson Wagner getting slaughtered by the killer with an axe hiding in the backseat of her car; Urban Legend tells the story of a group of pretty college students at a remote New England university. The focus of the story is Natalie (Alicia Witt), a beautiful, academically-gifted student at the fictional Pendleton University. Natalie and her friends (who include Jared Leto as a brash journalist, Rebecca Gayheart as her best friend, Michael Rosenbaum as the party-hardy boy, Joshua Jackson as a practical joker and Tara Reid as the sexy campus DJ) are all involved in the Folklore class being taught by Professor Wexler (Robert Englund). Wexler regales his class with urban legends, which include Pendleton’s own urban legend about a Psych professor who murdered six students at Stanley Hall 25 years ago. Natalie is the first one to suspect there’s a killer on campus, especially after she has ties to all of the victims. First, it’s her high school friend, a guy she’s in the woods with at night, her roommate (Danielle Harris)… No one, including her friends, Wexler, Dean Adams (John Neville) and security guard (Loretta Devine), of course, believes her until its too late and everyone begins to die according to famous urban legends, and Natalie believes it’s all tied to a dark and horrible secret from her past. Now she finds that she and her friends are part of the killer’s ultimate urban legend–the story of their own horrific deaths.
Many of the cast in Urban Legend went on to have fairly successful acting careers, so the acting in the movie is fairly decent. Although a bit campy, which is probably on purpose to add to the film, actors like Jared Leto, and Robert Englund really add to the talent list. The film does unfortunately feature Tara Reid, who as most can guess, can’t act to save her life. Overall the story is pretty good, and does provide a few scares now and then, it’s not terrifying or anything, but does have a few well placed ‘jump’ scenes. I might add there are also a few good comic moments too. It is worth sitting down and watching Urban Legend if you have never seen the movie.
Video
Urban Legend is presented on Blu in 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 High Definition featuring a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. As I said before the movie was released in 1998 so the master is about 10 years old. Despite the age and not originally being made for Hi-Def, Urban Legend does have a fairly improved picture quality over the standard DVD. Colors look very good and are not saturated, nor do they bleed. The only issue with color I have is with some of the darker night scenes. There seems to be a bit of a black crush that happens, this somewhat weakens the color, and softens the details. Speaking of detail it is quite strong throughout the rest of the film, minus the problem just mentioned. Contrast is good between blacks and white, as is the sharpness, again night scenes are somewhat hurt by the crushing issue. I do own the SD version so I can safely say it’s a huge improvement when compared side-by-side.
Audio
The audio track features Dolby TrueHD in 5.1 Surround (48kHz/16-bit) in English, French and oddly Portuguese. Also odd it features a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (640kbps) in Spanish and Thai??? While the video is fairly strong, the audio is just kinda… meh. I’m not implying its bad, but it’s just not powerful, nor immersing. I think a lot of this is due to the fact the movie isn’t a shoot em up action, there are no gun fights, car chases or explosions, so you don’t get that edge of your seat audio. The audio is clean and crisp though, just 90% of it is just talking or screaming. There is also very little base in the movie, again most likely just because of the type of movie it is. The musical score does provide some heavier bass moments though.
Special Features
Hmmmmm…. very very lazy is what comes to mind. Urban Legend on Blu features almost zero bonuses, and worst of all they are all in standard def. The back of the case does indicate BD-Live enabled, but for what there is, who cares. This is what you get…..
- “Director’s Commentary” - Just your standard director talk about the film, I fast forwarded through much of it to be honest.
- “Making of Featurette” - A look at the process of setting up and filming Urban Legend, again I didn’t find anything of particular interest that I just NEEDED to see.
Final Thoughts
Urban Legend is a fun film, it’s campy, but it’s supposed to be. A lot of the scenes are very predictable of the horror approach but it’s still interesting none the less. Video is very good, especially for a lower budget film made ten years ago. Audio is ok, nothing mind-blowing, but still crisp and clean. Let’s face it though the special features suck, no nice way to put it. If you don’t own Urban Legend on DVD, you might want to pick it up on Blu, also if you’ve never seen the movie, you might want to as well. If you already own the DVD, you can probably skip this one.
