Plot:

Prom Night 1969, three female outcasts are on dates with the popular guys. The guys drug their drinks and take them outside. One girl, Mary, doesn’t drink it and sees what’s happening, the guys wise up and chase her around school and accidentally kill her. Cut to modern days, another trio of girls are home alone on Prom Night. Jokingly the three of them call upon Bloody Mary. Later that night, they go missing, only to return days later claiming they where kidnapped by a group of football players. Now it seems a ghost is taking out the football players, using Urban Legends as her MO.

What do you get if you throw Prom Night 2, Urban Legend and The Ring into a blender? Answer, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. This in name only sequel has nothing to do with the two movies before it, in fact it was originally written as a stand alone movie. All the above doesn’t mean this is a bad movie, it’s surprising entertaining if you give it half a chance. I was a big fan of the first two movie and was disappointed learn the third movie was going direct to video but I decided to give it a chance.

I’m happy to report that Urban Legends 3 is a fun time. For one thing it has some really great kills, I’d have to say the kills where probably the best thing about this movie, some of them are cruel and pretty damn grizzly. We’re treated to some stabbings, a girl tearing her face off and more! The villain in this one is pretty good, she was like the ghost girls from The Ring and The Grudge, only a lot more pissed off, she‘s one of the better ghost villains. She also has this old song that plays on the radio or TV whenever she shows up, nice touch.

It helps that I really liked the two leads as well, twins Samantha and David try to uncover what’s happening and make themselves prime suspects for the murders as they do. Both characters where fun to hang around with and had a good sense of humour, well written characters. The movie pulls one really cruel trick you make you feel for one character then have her die horribly in the next scene. The directing here from Mary Lambert (Pet Semetary 1,2, The In Crowd) is decent, she injects style and mood into the movie, there are quite a few great shots in here. The acting here is good, better then most direct to video horrors.

While Urban Legends 3 was a lot of fun, there was a few details that kept it from being a great movie. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by going on about how un original it is. I’d have to start with the lack of suspense or chase scenes. While we do get one or two, their simply isn’t enough to satisfy. I really wish the lead ups to the deaths where just that little bit longer. It doesn’t help that the football players are a bunch of unlikable self cantered morons. I’m sorry, but any idiot who decides to urinate on an electric fence gets what they deserve, although I’d be lying if I didn’t say that scene made me laugh. The body count also seemed a tad to small, needed more inventive kills, doesn’t help that two killed sucked.

This is one of those movies when the audience knows what’s going on but the characters have to figure it out. I can’t say I was very interested in this element of the movie, in fact I felt it dragged a bit. The characters dig up motives but anyone who’s seen any kind of slasher film will have figured it all out. The movie even throws a mini twist at the end but it’s very easy to figure out, I wish this was just a little more of a straight forwards slasher movie as the mystery element was pretty dull and dragged the move down.

Oh and don’t get me started on some of the awful CGI this movie uses, more like a CGeyesore. We get really badly done CGI spiders running around. The final really goes over board with un needed CGI, could of so easily been done without it and it’s so over blown and terrible looking. If you can’t afford to make it look good, don’t use it. Ok, I could see them being forced to use CGI spiders but the stupid final scene BAH!

Over all Urban Legends: Bloody Mary is a disappointing, flawed but fun movie. It probably would of worked better as a stand alone movie. It’s always sad to see a series you like go the direct to video root, it’s kind of odd considering this was written by the same people that wrote X-Men 2 and Superman Returns. I just wish I could give this a higher rating. This is a real turn your brain off kind of movie. As direct to video sequels go, you could do a lot worse (Ugh, Starship Troopers 2) but you could also do a lot better. Enjoy.

More Images below COVER REVIEW:

God damn it, I thought these cover arts where dead and gone. The top part of the artwork is quite decent but the bottom part is terrible, talk about bring back the awful artworks of the 90s. I wish studios would start putting more effort into artwork instead of throwing out the same damn cover art all the time.

More Urban Legends: Bloody Mary Images