Urban Legends: Bloody Mary

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 (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 suspects 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; for example, football player Roger (Brandon Sacks) burns in a sunbed, Heather (Audra Lea Keener), girlfriend to football captain Buck (Michael Gregory Coe), has spiders erupting 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, that another victim committed suicide years later and that 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 Legend 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 Mary, who crawls out from under his bed and kills him with his broken bottle. 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, David by visiting Grace again. Grace still refuses to reveal the names but directs him to the school archives. Going through the archives, he finds out the identity of the fifth person and rushes home, but finds Sam gone and is suffocated by a hooded man. Sam meanwhile 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 corpse in it The hooded man 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 Samantha had phoned, also appears and helps her digging but suddenly hits her with the shovel. Suddenly Grace intervenes and tries to fight off Mr. Owens (giving Sam a chance to run) but he eventually knocks Grace out with the shovel. 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 captured her and is about to decapitate her 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 sitting together, console one another. It is announced that Bill Owens has died of a heart attack while trying to dispose Mary Banner's remains.

Reception

Film review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, reports an approval rating of 40% with a rating average of 4.4 based on 5 reviews. Felix Vasquez Jr. from 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." Geoffrey D. Roberts from ReelTalk.com called the film, "a flat, one-note ripoff" and criticizing its lack of scares.

Original sequel

In 2007 Sony sold the rights, 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. The film was later released under the title Ghosts of Goldfield.