URBAN LEGENDS: BLOODY MARY

Salt Lake City, 1969. During a school dance, young Mary is attacked and killed by the captain of the football team. Since then, it is said that if someone pronounces her name three times, they will be able to invoke the spirit of the girl. More than thirty years later, Samantha, one evening, pronounces the fateful name three times and from that moment begins to relive, through flashbacks, the last moments of Mary's life; moreover, her schoolmates begin to die one after another following the methods of famous urban legends. 1998: Jamie Blanks directs, following the wave of the successful "Scream," "Urban Legend," a teen slasher movie - well-made and not lacking in funny ideas. Year 2001: "Urban Legend 2 - Final Cut" sees the light of day under the direction of John Ottman, a disappointing sequel that adds nothing to the previous film. Tired of repeating the classic slasher formula, the producers thought it best this time to change the cards in play for this third chapter and introduce a story that harks back to the recent trend of ghost movies with a vengeful ghost, very dear to the Asian style. However, this attempt to bring a breath of fresh air to the series has miserably failed. Produced for the home video market only, "Urban Legend 3" immerses us in a situation of déjà vu from the start: if you say "Bloody Mary" three times, Mary's ghost will materialize. Aware that this idea (urban legend?) had already been widely exploited in the "Candyman" saga, the screenwriters considered it appropriate to explicitly cite the beautiful film with the man with the hook several times, just to cover themselves. But the film slides into other situations that smell of déjà vu: overlooking the stereotypical characters (now routine for this type of films), fantastic deaths are staged that greatly resemble those of the "Final Destination" saga (the boy in the solarium above all), only to suddenly turn towards the tragic figure of the vengeful ghost who wants to be found and remembered ("The Ring" and "The Call" don't ring a bell?). The direction is by veteran Mary Lambert, who had given us a good performance with the two "Pet Sematary," but who here fails to keep the viewer's interest, mainly due to a confused and full-of-holes screenplay. The character of Mary as a ghost has been rendered in a very disappointing way, using makeup that greatly resembles a hybrid between Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" and Samara in the American "The Ring"; moreover, it was chosen to show her clearly in several moments with rather laughable results. The only positive note, as previously mentioned, are the death sequences, all built according to famous urban legends and with pleasant gore/splatter effects where required (the scene of the spiders coming out of the pustule on a girl's face with bloody consequences above all). In short, "Urban Legend 3" turns out to be a hodgepodge of situations picked here and there from recent horror cinema poorly cooked and that only relies on good special effects. It will surely be indigestible to many.