Urban Legends 3: Bloody Mary (2005)
- written August 2005
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Samantha and 2 of her friends are doing a “sleep-over” on the night of the prom. When the rest of the house awakes the next morning, the 3 girls are nowhere to be found. A few days later, the girls turn up remembering just about nothing of what happened, outside of the few guys responsible. Seems Sam wrote a less than favorable letter picking on the football team and they decided to get her back. However, the individuals involved start to die off in a series of “urban legend influenced” deaths. Everyone thinks Sam and her brother are responsible but they think it’s the ghost of “Bloody Mary.” She was a girl who disappeared years back after a similar incident at the same school. Will they find out the truth or will Sam eventually become a casualty?
Overall: Not that anyone needed another sequel to the franchise, but this film at least hints to the prior films. And before the audience cries out “rip-off,” it explains that its ideas are similar to the “Candyman” Urban Legend. But at least that film did a better job of explaining why saying the name to a mirror conjures the spirit. This film fails to answer more than enough questions and just lost focus. The 3 girls are inseparable, until they vanish. Then the 2 friends are practically never heard from again nor do they ever seem concerned by their ordeal. The brother is quite concerned and spends much of the time defending his sister’s honor while the parents also have vanished. With the record-setting times for character disappearance, it’s tough to truly figure out what the story was wanting to tell us. How come one of the original 2 survivors of the 1969 incident is alive? No true explanation why one died and one lived. Nor why no one ever found the body of a person in the school. How hard did they look? Even in 2005, we see the search for Natalee Holloway in Aruba which I’m convinced would have found “Bloody Mary” in a much shorter time, then say 25 years. The film shows us practically nothing new that wasn’t already given to us in the “Prom Night” franchise (all 4 films). And then a few scenes seem heavily influenced by “Ringu” (of which there are 3 Japanese films and 2 American remakes). And why exactly did Sam want a stoned drug addict to driv her down city streets in the druggie’s car? Is she showing any consideration to the other driver’s on the road? Yeah, it’s a movie but frankly, I don’t think movies need to be promoting drinking while under the influence of anything and making it look like a good idea. It may be fictional, but it’s not smart. The film really offers nothing to the franchise or the horror genre at all. The acting is sub par and the plot answers so little, I fear there are endangered species of animals which could have been saved with the $$ this film cost to make. Comparison: Candyman meets Ringu |
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