Urban Legends: Final Cut Information

Urban Legends: Final Cut is a 2000 slasher film and sequel to the 1998 film Urban Legend. It was directed by John Ottman who also edited the film and composed the score. The film stars Jennifer Morrison, Matthew Davis, Loretta Devine, Anthony Anderson, Hart Bochner, Yani Gellman, and Eva Mendes.

Plot

A flight attendant attacks passengers and crew on an airplane, which turns out to be a scene in a film shooting at a film academy. As the students are preparing for their thesis films and the prestigious Hitchcock award, a student named Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) is unsure about her thesis. But after a conversation with security guard Reese Wilson (Loretta Devine), she decides to make a film about a serial killer murdering in the fashion of urban legends.

Meanwhile, a student named Lisa (Jacinda Barrett) is drinking in a bar, when someone drugs her drink. Lisa feels dazed and prepares to leave the bar, when someone abducts her. She wakes up in a bathtub filled with ice and discovers that her kidney was removed. Attacked by her abductor, she tries to flee through the window and is decapitated in the process. Lisa is not missed as she was about to go on a trip. The next day, Amy is preparing the shooting of her thesis film but is deserted by the assigned camera man, Toby Belcher (Anson Mount), who accuses Amy of stealing his thesis idea. Shooting begins with another camera man, Simon. When Sandra (Jessica Cauffiel), Amy's actress friend who played a victim in a scene, returns to an empty studio after forgetting her keys, she is attacked by the same killer who killed Lisa. Her friends witness her death when the material is smuggled into a sequence of takes of the scene, but discount it as another piece of acting, wondering who shot it. As there is no body and Sandra was about to go on a trip, her disappearance goes unnoticed. Travis (Matthew Davis), a friend of Amy who was depressed about having received a poor grade on his thesis film, is found to have committed suicide at the campus tower. At the funeral, Amy is offered help by Graham (Joey Lawrence), a student from a prosperous Hollywood background. She refuses, wishing to make it on her own. This offends Graham, who thinks it hypocritical, as Amy grew up in Hollywood as the daughter of a famous documentary film maker before moving to Chicago. At night, Amy enters the tower and is surprised by Trevor, Travis' twin brother, who claims that Travis was murdered. The next night, Simon (Marco Hofschneider) is attacked by the killer but his screaming for help goes unnoticed as the others are doing the "midnight scream". Amy, who has heard his last scream on her head phones, is suspicious and asks Reese to review the surveillance tapes. After she has detected the assault on Simon on the tapes, she is confronted by the killer. During the ensuing chase, she loses the tapes and cannot prove her claims to a skeptical Reese. Amy now believes the claims of Trevor and meets up with him but, he still refuses to inform the police, hinting at a criminal past.

The next scene to be shot involves the "Tunnel of Terror", which is set up in an old carnival ride. Sophomores Stan (Anthony Anderson) and Dirk (Michael Bacall) are attacked and electrocuted by the killer while preparing the tunnel. Amy, who is taking a tour of the tunnel, discovers the corpses and is again confronted by the killer. She escapes again and informs the police, who attribute the deaths to accidental electrocution. Amy is comforted by Trevor. They begin having sex when Trevor suddenly stabs Amy. She wakes up and realizes that it was only a dream. Seeing a light on at the bell-tower, she decides to go there and finds her lesbian friend, Vanessa (Eva Mendes). Vanessa received a love note supposedly written by Amy, but when Amy disclaims any knowledge of such a note, the two are attacked by the killer and chased to the top of the tower, where Vanessa is captured. Meanwhile, Amy is locked in a room also containing Sandra and Simon's corpses. When Amy manages to break out, she finds Vanessa being hanged from the bell.

Amy runs out of the tower into the arms of Trevor, who has found out that the thing the victims all had in common was their having worked on Travis' thesis film. They review Travis' film, which turns out to be awful, and find out that somebody placed Travis' credits onto another film. They suspect Toby, the only person working on the film left alive. They kidnap him and call in Professor Solomon (Hart Bochner) to present their suspicions. However, Toby reveals that Travis faked Toby's sound credit to help him graduate admitting that he never went anywhere near Travis' film. Upset that he gave Toby "an A for nothing", Professor Solomon shoots Toby and threatens Amy and Trevor. He also reveals that he murdered Travis making it look like a suicide. He holds Trevor at gunpoint and Amy yells to him is this what he wants. He reveals feeling trapped in a teaching position since failing to win the Hitchcock award in his student days for which he blames Amy's father, who cast the deciding vote against him. He now wanted to take credit for Travis' brilliant film and use Amy's Urban Legend film to eliminate all who worked with Travis, framing Amy in the process.

Graham, who has been lurking in the back all this time, hits Solomon with a chair hoping to knock him out, but is shot by the professor after saying, "It only works in movies." In the confusion, Trevor manages to disarm the professor. Solomon then threatens Trevor with a shovel while Amy gets a hold of the gun and threatens Solomon. Reese storms in, thinking Amy to be the killer, and forces her to drop the gun. Solomon accuses Amy, and calls attention to the fact that Reese saw Amy running out of the tower. As Reese never told anyone about this, she becomes suspicious and punches the professor. He tries to take her gun, but in the ensuing brawl, Reese's gun is lost amongst a pile of prop guns. Amy, Trevor, and Solomon all grab for a gun. Trevor's gun is a fake when he tries to shoot Solomon, and Solomon's gun is a fake when he tries to shoot Amy. Amy got a hold of Reese's gun but hesitates to fire. Solomon attacks her again, but she shoots him. The scene then cuts to the Hitchcock awards, where an award is posthumously given to Travis. As Trevor is about to accept the award on his late brother's behalf, a sniper appears in the rafters, only to be shot down by Reese. The altercation is then revealed to be a scene in Amy's new film "Urban Legends". It is revealed that Toby and Graham survived their attacks and are now busily working on her behalf.

The final scenes show Solomon in a mental institution where, after watching Amy's film, the nurse asks him if he enjoyed the movie. He is wheeled out by a nurse, who is revealed to be Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart), the previous film's killer, saying that they have a lot in common.

Cast

• Jennifer Morrison as Amy Mayfield
• Matthew Davis as Trevor Stark/Travis Stark
• Hart Bochner as Professor Solomon
• Eva Mendes as Vanessa Valdeon
• Loretta Devine as Reese Wilson
• Joey Lawrence as Graham Manning
• Anson Mount as Toby Belcher
• Rebecca Gayheart as Brenda
• Anthony Anderson as Stan Washington
• Jessica Cauffiel as Sandra Petruzzi
• Michael Bacall as Dirk Reynolds
• Marco Hofschneider as Schorm "Simon" Jabuscko
• Derek Aasland as P.A. Kevin
• Jacinda Barrett as Lisa
• Peter Millard as Dr. Richard Fain
• Chas Lawther as Dean Patterson
• Yani Gellman as Rob
• Regina Hall as Marinna
• Jeannette Sousa as Libby
• Chuck Campbell as Geek in Plane
• Rory Feore as Killer Flight Attendant

Urban legends used in the film

The following urban legends are mentioned or depicted in the film:

• Lisa is drugged at a bar and wakes up in a bath tub of ice, her kidney being removed.
• Amy recounts a legend about students screaming at midnight to relieve tension, causing a brutal assault to go unnoticed. This is later re-enacted in Simon's death.
• Sandra tells of a burrito contaminated with roach eggs, which then hatch inside a girl's nose and of a chicken sandwich containing pus from the chicken's tumor.
• Vanessa warns Travis that cell phones cause cancer.
• The first scene of Amy's film has a girl discovering the corpse of her dog, who supposedly licked her hand at night, in the shower, with the message "Humans can lick too."
• The basis for one of the scenes in Amy's film is a carnival displaying fake corpses in a "Tunnel of Terror". As the carnival moves on, several children are missing and the fake corpses are revealed to be real.
• Sandra is murdered on camera.Her friends think it is a fake murder because there is no body

Trivia

• Scenes featuring the exterior of Alpine University campus were filmed on location at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario in Canada.
• Loretta Devine and Rebecca Gayheart are the only actors from the previous film to return.

Reception

On 6 April 2013, the meta-critic site Rotten Tomatoes, listed the film as having an approval rating of 9% among critics based on 79 reviews, with 7 fresh and 72 rotten reviews. The site's consensus is: "This teen horror movie brings nothing new to an already exhausted genre. And it's bad. Really bad".

Box office

The film brought in $21,468,807 in the United States and brought in $17,105,555 overseas, bringing its total box office revenue to $38,574,362. The film was considered a moderate success, due to the budget of the film being $14,000,000. However, the film only grossed about half of what the first film brought in ($72,000,000).