10 Best Films Based On Urban Legends
1. Urban Legend
It's impossible to leave this 1998 Jamie Blanks film off the list, as its entire premise is based on modern folklore stories meant to terrify us. Urban Legend follows a college student (Alicia Witt) as her friends are picked off one by one in ways inspired by famous scary stories.
It's a post-Scream, irony-filled ride that plays like a greatest hits of urban legends album; you got "The Killer is in the Backseat", the guy who slices your Achilles tendon under your car, your dog in the microwave, your boyfriend's corpse hanging over your car on lover's lane, even a variation on humans can lick too.
As Scream knockoffs go, it's far from the worst - daresay, one of the best, even. Blanks continued his career as a genre director for a few years, to much less success with Valentine, but here he absolutely nails the cheeky atmosphere of the project. Anyone with an interest in modern urban tales we like to tell with flashlights poised over our faces will get a kick out of it.