Hello Mary Lou! It's...Urban Legends 3

As we begin the welcome process of closing down 2020, it's nice to think back to the handful of good things this year of horrors has brought us. Among them...um...my antibodies? 

Oh, and on a personal note, my rediscovery of Urban Legend and first time enjoyment of its sequels.

Quick Plot: It's prom night, 1969, and shy Mary has snagged herself a popular jock as her date. Strings are attached, as it turns out said gentleman caller and his pals are really just out to roofie a few unsuspecting seniors via some laced punch. Mary ends up dead, though if you say her name three times, you just might flash forward to 2005's Sam (a young Kate Mara), regaling her slumber party pals with some urban legend tales involving poor Bloody Mary, trapped forever in a locked treasure chest.

Turns out, Mary has been waiting 35 years to come back for her revenge, doling it out creatively on the teenage offspring of all her former classmates responsible for her fate. We've got a Final Destination 3-esque tanning bed demise, CGI spider eggs disguised as a pimple, death-by-peeing-on-an-electrical fence, and more. 

The Final Destination 3 similarities don't end there: any specific connection to the first two Urban Legend films is essentially brushed away by a "hey! I found this article on the internet about other urban legend-inspired killings." I suppose you could count the more uncomfortable ties as well: as in the first Urban Legend, a dog is killed (part 2 was kind enough to only do so in its movie within the movie) and as with Loretta Divine's Reese, the film's only black character can easily be charmed by complimenting her on her resemblance to Foxy Brown.

Directed by Pet Sematary (and Pet Sematary 2)'s Mary Lambert, Bloody Mary is clearly itself a fan of the horror genre. That's not surprising when you see that the script was cowritten by Krampus/Trick 'r Treat's Michael Dougherty. It shares some DNA of the post-Scream self-aware dead teenager flick, but also has some deep affection for older films, particularly the glorious Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. 

The early aughts were a weird time for pop horror. Scream-infused slashers were slowly dying away, while The Ring's success made J-Horror the hot new style. Saw would burst onto the scene in 2004, bringing with it a whole new movement in nihilism and gore. Landing on DVD in 2005, Blood Mary feels in some ways like a carefully blended combination of these styles. There's dated CGI attempting bordering on silly, a ghostly dark-haired girl showing up to make faces, and a batch of beautiful young white people awaiting a truly horrid fate. 

That sounds kind of terrible, but when put together with just the right touch, it's a weirdly dumb good time.

High Points

While it's a little inconsistent, the overall tone of Bloody Mary feels just right. Teenagers are dying in bizarre and brutal ways, but, well, most of them are kind of awful to begin with, and Lambert's touch feels like it carries just the right weight to make the deaths land in decent taste (yes, I realize I'm saying high school students being burned to death in tanning beds or castrated by electric fences is tasteful, but some of you know what I mean)

Low Points

There's really only one relationship with any real heart, and that's Sam and her brother David. While it's refreshing to have a genuinely loving sibling bond, it also makes the ending and lack of, well, dealing with a key aspect of the ending rather unsatisfying

Lessons Learned

The most effective morning beauty routine involves wearing a perfectly matched Victoria's Secret bra and panties set and slipping into high heels before putting on your makeup

Complete confidence means nothing if your mom's a dirty alcoholic

Being isolated from your pals after watching your frenemies murdered will do wonders for the health of your hair

Look! It's- 

Pre-"I didn't even want to be in the Nightmare On Elm Street remake" Rooney Mara, Kate's little, now more famous sister as "Classroom Girl #1." Naturally, I got very distracted from the plot of Bloody Mary with my much more interesting new fantasy version of Whatever Happened to Baby Mara?

Rent/Bury/Buy

Bloody Mary is a fun time capsule of early 21st century teen horror, one that feels charmingly less hip than some of its more CW network-cast quickies. I watched it via Netflix disc (yes, I'm that old) and there's a cute making-of featurette that certainly took me back to a simpler time. It doesn't quite pack the same satisfying winks as the first Urban Legend, but it's a worthy entry into what turned out to be a surprisingly fun-filled series. 

All Dogs Go To Heaven (unless buried in a sequel)

What a strange, strange decision Mary Lambert made in following up her flawed but unnerving 1991 hit Pet Sematary with a pseudo horror comedy sequel no one wanted. But what a smart, smart decision she made in casting Clancy Brown.

Quick Plot: Jeff is an average teenager not destined to save the world (but played by a T2 era Edward Furlong) with a famous actress mom and estranged veterinarian dad played by everybody’s second favorite nerd, Anthony Edwards.

Look, I love the guy too, but all the medical knowledge in the world won’t make him more beloved to me than Rick Moranis.

Anyway, Mom dies in a freak on-set electrocution accident, sending son and pops to move back to her hometown Ludlow, the same New England hamlet where Gage Creed went No Fair on his family after being buried in Native American spiritual grounds.

Before you can remember the second verse to How Much Is That Doggy In the Window, Jeff finds himself on the same haunted soil, but this being something of a Stephen King knockoff, bullies are thrown in for extra measure. Tom Hanks' best friend from Big plays a mullety brat who lures Jeff into the Pet Sematary, but it’s the chubby Drew who tells him about its sordid history.

Did I mention Drew has a dog? Okay, he does and you know what shall become of it, but what I neglected to say is that it’s by the hands of the one, the only, the most underrated character actor in modern history, Clancy Brown.

Eff. Yeah.

Brown plays Gus, the town sheriff and jerky stepdad to Drew. For no reason other than Clancy Brown Is Awesome, he’s also the only character in the film with a New England accent. It’s a beautiful sound and were Mr. Brown to start his own phone sex company, I have no shame admitting that I’d fast be broke.

But back to Mary Lambert’s oddly toned story, one that eventually decides that the horror doesn’t seem to be hopping so hey! Let’s make you laugh. 

Or maybe that was just Clancy Brown’s decision.

Let me tell you something folks: if there’s one thing better than Clancy Brown hamming it up with a New England accent in a mid-90s horror sequel, it’s (minor spoiler) Zombie Clancy Brown hamming it up with a New England accent in a mid-90s horror sequel. As he slaughters rabbits, chews with his mouth open, and forces himself upon his wife (okay, that’s not awesome), Brown raises Pet Sematary 2 up a notch into something weirdly almost wonderful. 

Almost. Because even though there are children being gorily murdered by semis and mopeds in a somewhat light-hearted matter, there’s also fuzzy special effects and Skinemaxy blue-hued sex scenes...where Anthony Edwards gets mounted by his naked housekeeper with a wolf head. 

Hm.

It’s weird, plain and simple. Lambert probably would have been wiser to establish the horror-comedy vibe from scene 1. Instead, we’re stuck with poorly executed scares that rather suddenly turn into laughs at the 40 minute mark. It’s not the best way to make a movie.

High Points

Brown, Clancy

Low Points

Oh, I don’t know, the fact that the movie doesn’t come close to being scary but never commits to its own comedy?

Lessons Learned

Bringing a cat into the classroom on your first day at a new school? Not too smart

Working in LA as a veternarian might harden a man in the kind of way that leads to him keeping handgun handily sitting on top of his nightstand 

A great way to leave your audience deciding they’ve just watched a comedy: end on a fuzzy floating head portrait montage of all the characters killed in the film. Guaranteed laughmaker 

Confession Time

As much as I blast the original Pet Sematary and to a lesser extent, this one for having its characters make the ridiculous choice to bury their loved ones in evil ground after it has already proven itself, you know, eeeeeee-viiiiiiiiiiil, I would, without hesitation, reserve a double plot for Mookie and Joplin in a heartbeat if there was a Ludlow Pet Sematary in my neighborhood. Sure, they may come back and kill me, but you know...cute zombie cats!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Pet Sematary 2 isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation (or lack thereof) would have you believe. There’s something oddly admirable about Lambert’s decision to re-tackle Pet Sematary with a completely different and almost original take on the same basic story. It’s almost a shame that the end result is such a halfhearted mess, an inconsistently toned tale that only feels to find its footing when Clancy Brown is onscreen. The movie is streaming on Netflix and is certainly worth a gander for the curious or Clancy Brown fan (of which I assume is 100% of the human population) so give it a casual watch if you’re in the mood for a failed mid-90s horror experiement. It's...different.