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

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

A number 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 below producer Gary Dauberman (The Conjuring Universe). However the authentic, written off by some when it was launched as a coattail-riding money seize, is value a recent 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 provides City Legend a built-in checklist of terrors to select from, because the script ticks off such eventualities as an axe-wielding killer hiding within the again seat of a automobile, 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 principle characters in faculty collectively, taking the identical “introduction to folklore” class, makes the frilly loss of life 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 could’t resist winking on the viewers, whether or not that’s taking part in “Complete Eclipse of the Coronary heart” in a scene the place you really want a personality to “flip round” (per the lyrics) and understand her doom is lurking simply behind her; casting the star of A Nightmare on Elm Road as a creepy faculty professor; or having the automobile stereo of Jackson’s character reveal he was blasting the Dawson’s Creek theme music. 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 up to now so unforgivable that grotesque payback is the one answer (at the least in line with the killer), and City Legend teases out the main points 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 Nineties means it’s very dated to that particular pre-smartphone, early-days-of-the-internet period. Characters go to the library and faculty newspaper archives to search for clues that may take 10 seconds to lookup in 2025, they usually run to pay telephones when they should name for assist. Individuals’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 woman’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 films have been—would have way more superior know-how to assist its characters talk whereas determining what’s taking place round them. Nevertheless it’ll nonetheless must tie into the tales that justify its title, maybe by adapting and updating city legends which have develop into 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.

Need extra io9 information? Try when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and every part it’s good to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.