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 direct-to-video supernatural slasher film directed by Mary Lambert, and starring Kate Mara, Robert Vito, Tina Lifford, Ed Marinaro and Lillith Fields.

It is the third and final installment in the Urban Legend film series, although it is almost entirely unrelated to both of the films that came before it, using supernatural elements instead of a whodunit formula. The film follows three high school students who inadvertently summon the ghost of a dead high-school girl, who starts coming after her old classmates.

Plot
In 1969, at the Worthington High Homecoming Dance, a group of high school footballers try to drug and kidnap their dates. Their plan works with most of the girls, but one of them, Mary Banner, tries to escape. The football captain chases her into a storage room and punches her, causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk. Unable to revive her or hear her heartbeat, the footballer panics and locks her body in a trunk.

35 years later, in 2004, high school girl Samantha "Sam" Owens jokingly conjures up Bloody Mary with her friends during a sleepover. Over the following days, a number of strange events occur, with Sam experiencing hallucinations of a dead girl bleeding from her head. Several of Sam's classmates also die under bizarre circumstances; football player Roger is burned alive in a sunbed, Sam's friend Heather has spiders burst from her cheek and gets her face mutilated by broken mirror shards, and football player Tom is electrocuted while urinating on an old electrical fence.

In her homework, Sam finds notes that had been sent to Heather about Mary Banner's disappearance and the 1969 homecoming kidnappings. She looks through school paper archives, where she learns that Mary was never found and is presumed dead, and that another victim of the kidnappings, Grace Taylor, still lives in town. Sam and her brother David visit Grace, who claims that Mary's "life force" is exacting revenge on the children of the five people involved in the kidnappings, but that she cannot (or will not) reveal the names of the perpetrators.

The siblings go to warn the school's football captain and Heather's boyfriend Buck, whom has been blaming Sam and David for the recent deaths. Buck reveals that his father, Coach Jacoby, the football coach, was one of the kidnappers in 1969, but that he did not hurt Mary. Later, Buck is attacked and murdered by a demonic visage of Mary whilst at a motel.

David is directed to the school archives by Grace and discovers the identity of the fifth person involved in the kidnappings. He rushes home, but finds Sam gone and is suffocated by a hooded figure. Meanwhile, Sam has another vision of Mary, revealing that she was still alive when she was locked in the trunk, but suffocated to death soon after waking up. The visions also reveal to Sam the whereabouts of the trunk. Sam visits Grace, who reluctantly agrees to drive Sam to the school. There, Sam finds the storage room and the trunk with Mary's body. She is nearly attacked by the hooded figure, but manages to escape 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 Bill, whom Sam had phoned, also appears and helps her dig, before he suddenly hits Sam with the shovel. Bill reveals to Sam that he was the one that locked Mary in the trunk, and that he also killed David. He attempts to kill her to stop her from telling law enforcement, before Mary's ghost appears and kills him. After the emergency services arrive, Sam and Grace are treated by personnel as they sit consoling one another.

Production
Production of the movie began on November 20, 2004.

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

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

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 40% with an average rating of 4.4 based on 5 reviews. 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." Geoffrey D. Roberts of ReelTalk.com called the film "a flat, one-note ripoff" and criticized its lack of scares.