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Created Apr 23, 2009 01:34AM PST • Edited Apr 23, 2009 01:34AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Bad 1.0

   With this “Urban Legends” sequel totally unconnected to the original twosome there isn’t even anything in Mary Lambert’s supernatural hodgepodge “Urban Legends: Bloody Mary” that those familiar with the name brand will be able to get behind. Here stands a movie devoid of scares and possessive of a few unintentionally laugh-out-loud sequences (which mostly show up near the dumbfounding end) that, besides recycling an urban legend already referenced in the first film (albeit to a teeny-tiny degree), feels like very old news in the supernatural subgenre of horror movies, the film’s ghostly tormentor smacking of every dead-eyed post-“Exorcist” human-cum-creature we’ve ever seen. Lambert isn’t what one would call a skilled auteur — go back to her “Pet Sematary” adaptation to see that even her supposed breakout films are a bucket of crap — but “Urban Legends: Bloody Mary” is shockingly inept even by her standards, putting a none-too-novel spin on the titular theme while introducing uninterestingly stereotyped teen characters (played by actors one can hardly call thespians) prone to going out of their way to get themselves massacred by the vengeful spirit Mary, out to get payback against the high-schoolers responsible for her death years ago by going after them or their children a la Freddie Krueger. Yawn away.

4. Acting

   Bad 1.0

   Uniformly one-note.

5. Male Stars Bad 1.0

6. Female Stars Bad 1.0

7. Female Costars Bad 1.0

8. Male Costars Bad 1.0

10. Film

    Pretty Bad 1.5

    Even some of the worst films have certain shots that you can hang onto, but “Urban Legends: Bloody Mary” is so permanen in its aesthetic blandness that it doesn’t deliver even this. Lambert, meanwhile, continues to show a disconcerting inability to operate a camera convincingly, or generate the slightest bit of tension out of her material. In short, it’s no wonder she’s never broken out into the horror mainstream. The characters, finally, are unconvincing even in the acting performances therein or their utter lack of discernible emotion.

11. Direction Pretty Bad 1.5

12. Play Pretty Bad 1.5

13. Music Bad 1.0

14. Visuals Bad 1.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.2

17. Sex Titillating 1.9

18. Violence Fierce 2.5

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Fantasy 5.0

22. Circumstantial Fantasy 5.0

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0