Urban Legends: Bloody Mary

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (also known as Urban Legends 3: Bloody Mary or simply Urban Legend 3) is a 2005 American supernatural horror film directed by Mary Lambert and starring Kate Mara, Robert Vito, Tina Lifford, Ed Marinaro and Lillith Fields. A sequel to Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000), it is the third installment in the Urban Legend film series. The film follows a high school student who inadvertently unleashes a long-dead spirit, and one by one, her friends begin to die.

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary
Official DVD cover
Directed byMary Lambert
Produced by
  • Aaron Merrell
  • Louis Phillips
  • Scott Messer
Written by
Based onUrban Legend
by Silvio Horta
Starring
Music byJeff Rona
CinematographyIan Fox
Edited byMichelle Harrison
Production
company
NPP Productions
Distributed bySony Pictures Home Entertainment
Release date
  • July 19, 2005 (2005-07-19)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary was shot on location in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Released direct-to-video on July 19, 2005, it is the first film in the series that uses a supernatural element.

Plot

In 1969, three high school footballers tried to drug and kidnap their prom night dates. Their plan works with two of the girls but the third, Mary Banner (Lillith Fields), tries to escape. The football captain chases her into a storage room and punches her, knocking her out. Unable to revive her nor able to hear her heartbeat, he believes Mary to be dead. Panicking, he locks her body in an old trunk.

Thirty-five years later, in 2004, this story is told among three school girls during a sleep over. One of them, Sam Owens (Kate Mara), had written an article in the school paper critical of football players' academic achievements and subsequently she, her friends, and her brother David (Robert Vito) are treated as outcasts by the rest of the school. They also jokingly conjure up Bloody Mary and the next morning all three are gone. After having been missing for one day, they reappear, waking up in an old deserted mill, with no knowledge of how they got there. While most suspect a hoax on the girls' part, Sam and David suspect that it is a prank by football players.

While Sam is haunted by visions of a dead girl bleeding from her head, several pupils die under mysterious circumstances resembling urban legends; football player Roger (Brandon Sacks) burns in a sunbed, Heather (Audra Lea Keener), girlfriend to football captain Buck (Michael Gregory Coe), has spiders erupt from a swelling on her cheek, driving her to cut her face with a mirror, and football player, Tom (Nate Herd), is electrocuted while urinating on an old electrical fence, his ring finger being bitten or cut off. Buck blames these deaths on the Owens siblings. Before her death, Heather made up with Sam and tried to tell her that this happened before. In her homework, Sam finds notes sent to Heather about the disappearance of Mary Banner and the homecoming kidnappings of 1969, as well as notes referencing the events of the previous films. Browsing the school paper's archives, they find out that Mary was never found and is presumed dead, another victim committed suicide in 1982 and the third, Grace Taylor (Tina Lifford), still lives in town.

They visit Grace, who claims that Mary, or rather, her "life force", is exacting revenge on the children of the five people involved in the kidnappings but cannot (or will not) reveal the names of the perpetrators. While Sam is prone to believe her, David remains skeptical and thinks that Grace is the killer. While sneaking around in Grace's house, he also found out that Grace produced or collected artwork on Urban Legends and identifies Grace as the originator of the notes sent to Heather. The siblings go to warn Buck, who admits that he and his mates orchestrated Samantha's disappearance and blames her for the death of his friends. He also reveals that his father, the football coach, was one of the kidnappers in 1969 but did not hurt Mary. Sam, however, suspects that the coach was the one that killed Mary as she saw him put flowers on her headstone earlier. Her stepfather, who overheard her, tells her to reveal any solid evidence she has.

Meanwhile, an upset Buck tries to relax by drinking and watching a film in a motel. Falling asleep, he wakes up from hearing a dripping sound and discovers the corpse of his dog. He is attacked by a demonic Mary, who crawls out from under his bed and kills him with his broken whiskey bottle, which contains Tom's finger. Different rumours about his death are spread immediately.

Both siblings are trying to find clues about the fifth remaining perpetrator; Sam by browsing through old photographs and David by visiting Grace again. Grace still refuses to reveal the names but directs him to the school archives. Going through the archives, he discovers the identity of the fifth person and rushes home, but finds Sam gone and is suffocated by a hooded figure. Meanwhile, Sam has visions of Mary again, revealing that the girl was not dead when she was locked in the trunk and that she later awoke, realizing she was buried alive. The visions also reveal to Sam the whereabouts of the trunk. Sam visits Grace, who tells her to find and bury Mary's corpse and reluctantly agrees to drive Sam to the school. While Grace is waiting in the van, Sam finds the storage room and the trunk with Mary's decayed corpse in it. The hooded figure also appears and enters the storage room but Sam locks him inside while carrying Mary's remains outside to the van.

Finding Grace unconscious, Sam drives the van to the cemetery, where she begins to dig a grave for Mary under her headstone. Her stepfather, whom Sam had phoned, also appears and helps her dig. He suddenly hits Sam with the shovel. Grace intervenes and tries to fight off Mr. Owens (Whom Grace recognizes and calls by his name) but he eventually knocks Grace out. Pursuing his stepdaughter through the graveyard, Bill Owens (Ed Marinaro) reveals that he was the one that locked Mary in the trunk and that he also killed his stepson (Sam's brother), David. He finally captures her and is about to decapitate her with the shovel when Mary, in her living form, appears. Smiling towards Sam, she kisses him, then reverts to her ghastly form and drags him with her into the grave.

When Sam wakes up, the grave is surrounded by police and medical personnel retrieving her stepfather's corpse. She and Grace are bandaged and treated for their wounds, and they sit consoling one another. It is announced that Bill Owens has died of a heart attack while trying to dispose of the remains of Mary Banner and Bill Owens is exposed as Mary's killer.

Cast
  • Kate Mara as Samantha "Sam" Owens
  • Robert Vito as David Owens
  • Tina Lifford as Grace Taylor
    • Charlene Baptista as young Grace
  • Ed Marinaro as Bill Owens
  • Michael Gregory Coe as Buck Jacoby
  • Lillith Fields as Mary Banner
  • Nancy Everhard as Pam Owens
  • Audra Lea Keener as Heather Thompson
  • Don Shanks as Coach Jacoby
  • Jeff Olson as Sheriff Thompson McKenna
  • Nate Heard as Tom Higgins
  • Brandon Sacks as Roger Dalton
  • Haley Evans as Martha
  • Olesya Rulin as Mindy
  • Odessa Rae as Natalie
  • Haley McCormick as Gina Lotnick
  • Rooney Mara as Classroom Girl #1

Production

Production of the movie began on November 20, 2004.

Filming

Principal filming ended on December 16, 2004. The movie was shot in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Release

Home media

The film was released direct-to-video on July 19, 2005.

Reception

Critical response

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, reports an approval rating of 40% with an average rating of 4.4 based on 5 reviews, making it the best-reviewed film in the series on that site.[1] Felix Vasquez Jr. of Cinema Crazed gave the film a mixed review, writing, "'Bloody Mary' is not the worst movie on video store shelves as many people have claimed, but it's just not effective enough to ever be anything more than a simple horror movie about urban legends."[2] Geoffrey D. Roberts of ReelTalk.com called the film, "a flat, one-note ripoff" and criticized its lack of scares.[3]

See also

In 2007, Sony sold the rights to the franchise and a fourth installment was planned, called Urban Legends: Goldfield Murders. However, after being impressed by the DVD sales of Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, Sony bought back the rights to the franchise. The film was later released under the title Ghosts of Goldfield.[4]

References
  1. Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005) at Rotten Tomatoes, retrieved January 2013
  2. Vasquez, Felix. "Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)". Cinema-Crazed.com. Felix Vasquez Jr. Retrieved 31 October 2016.
  3. Roberts, Geoffrey. "Been There, Seen That - ReelTalk Movie Reviews". ReelTalk.com. Geoffrey D. Roberts. Retrieved 31 October 2016.
  4. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0494228/trivia
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