A cut far below the rest!

Sukanya Verma

Bad acting, lousy script, sloppy direction and mindless violence.

Negative as hell, but that's Urban Legend: Final Cut for you.

This is an unashamed attempt to cash in on the ever-popular genre of teen slasher flicks. It is also a sequel to the 1998 Urban Legend.

And, like most sequels, Final Cut too fails to make any impact.

The wafer-thin plot revolves around Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison), an ingenious student of filmmaking in Alpine University, wherein the best shot film is awarded the Hitchcock Award of the Year.

Amy, who excels in making documentary films like her famous dad, hits upon the 'novel' theme of a serial killer on the run. Alfred Hitchcock, anyone?

Funnily enough, her teachers (Hart Bochner), also think highly of Miss Mayfield's purported brainchild.

Meanwhile, Amy's idol and the gifted student Travis (Matthew Davis), shoots himself for getting a C minus for his project. But that's not the end of Travis. He resurfaces a couple of reels later as his lookalike twin, Trevor.

As Amy begins shooting for her chiller thriller, one by one, the cast and crewmembers start getting brutally murdered.

Interestingly, the killer is a clumsy looking guy/girl (doesn't really matter), clad in a full body leather cloak and a rugby helmetlike silver mask. Oh yes, not to forget the mandatory kitchen knife.

Scared yet?

Come to think of it, since the victims invite their deaths with open arms, you don't really mind the psychopath doing the needful.

Final Cut seems a cheap rehash of the earlier Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Scream, Wild Things, I Know What You Did Last Summer, even Urban Legend.

Clichéd dumb blondes, nutty geeks, rich brats, mysterious hunks, blood and gore, rats, sickly corpses, uncalled for nudity, ear-splitting screams and a screeching soundtrack. It's all there in Final Cut.

What more can you ask for?

Official website