‘City Legend’ Has ’90s Nostalgia and Folklore Frights Value Revisiting

Scream arrived in 1996, revitalizing slasher motion pictures and ushering in a rush of imitators—very like Halloween and Friday the thirteenth did in the course of the style’s first wave within the late Seventies and early ‘80s. Now we’re in a 3rd wave, with Scream’s profitable return and the current releases of brand-new motion pictures within the late ‘90s-early 2000s I Know What You Did Last Summer and Final Destination collection. 

A couple of months in the past, 1998’s City Legend—which spawned two sequels you’ve by no means heard of—was tapped with the resurrection wand and will quickly be discovering new life underneath producer Gary Dauberman (The Conjuring Universe). However the unique, written off by some when it was launched as a coattail-riding money seize, is price a contemporary look. 

Not solely does it have a surprisingly good solid (together with Twin Peaks’ Alicia Witt, Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund, a just-post-My So-Known as Life Jared Leto, Halloween collection veteran Danielle Harris, future Smallville star Michael Rosenbaum, and ‘90s teen goals Joshua Jackson, Rebecca Gayheart, and Tara Reid; there’s even a cameo for Brad “Chucky” Dourif), however its premise overtly attracts on the very folktales that inspired the earliest slasher films. It’s gimmicky, and it is aware of it—“An city legend serial killer? It’s a stretch,” a skeptical character factors out—however we wouldn’t have 1974’s Black Christmas with out that previous yarn in regards to the killer who calls from inside the home.

Its setup offers City Legend a built-in checklist of terrors to select from, because the script ticks off such situations as an axe-wielding killer hiding within the again seat of a automotive, the explosive mix of Pop Rocks and soda, the reveal of “aren’t you glad you didn’t activate the sunshine?” scrawled in blood throughout a bed room wall, and extra. 

It’s loads of hassle for any maniac to go to. However having the primary characters in faculty collectively, taking the identical “introduction to folklore” class, makes the flowery demise scenes at the least thematically comprehensible, particularly as soon as the killer’s motivation is revealed. 

That mentioned, City Legend can also be a deeply foolish film. It may well’t resist winking on the viewers, whether or not that’s taking part in “Whole Eclipse of the Coronary heart” in a scene the place you actually need a personality to “flip round” (per the lyrics) and notice her doom is lurking simply behind her; casting the star of A Nightmare on Elm Road as a creepy faculty professor; or having the automotive stereo of Jackson’s character reveal he was blasting the Dawson’s Creek theme track. The campus cop, performed by character actor Loretta Devine, indulges her Pam Grier obsession in a number of scenes… simply because.

There are additionally tropes galore; the “killer on a university campus” is a time-worn concept, with Black Christmas to thank as soon as once more. Almost each slasher film spirals from a misdeed previously so unforgivable that grotesque payback is the one resolution (at the least in line with the killer), and City Legend teases out the small print of the reveal in a method that doesn’t really feel utterly apparent. And even when you determine who the parka-clad assassin is earlier than the film desires you to, the items match collectively in a fairly satisfying method.

City Legend being a relic of the Nineteen Nineties means it’s very dated to that particular pre-smartphone, early-days-of-the-internet period. Characters go to the library and college newspaper archives to search for clues that may take 10 seconds to search for in 2025, and so they run to pay telephones when they should name for assist. Folks’s pagers go off at interrupting moments. Witt’s character has to battle along with her surly roommate to make use of their shared landline—interrupting the lady’s dial-up message board trolling for goth dudes to hook up with.

An City Legend remake set in up to date occasions—as all of the current slasher reboot motion pictures have been—would have much more superior know-how to assist its characters talk whereas determining what’s taking place round them. Nevertheless it’ll nonetheless have to tie into the tales that justify its title, maybe by adapting and updating city legends which have grow to be viral sensations. These tales might catch hearth due to the web, however they nonetheless draw on our deepest, darkest fears. Are you in the home alone?

City Legend streams on Shudder beginning August 1.

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