In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

Example input: plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
they get into an accident .
one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
what 's the deal ?
watch the movie and " sorta " find out . . .
critique : a mind - fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just did n't snag this one correctly
.
they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
so what are the problems with the movie ?
well , its main problem is that it 's simply too jumbled
.
it starts off " normal " but then downshifts into this " fantasy " world in which you , as an audience member ,
have no idea what 's going on
.
there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
now i personally do n't mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film 's biggest problem .
it 's obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
not really .
the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half - way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still did n't the make the film all that more entertaining .
i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is " into it " even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
okay , we get it .
. .
there are people chasing her and we do n't know who they are .
do we really need to see it over and over again ?
how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
there might 've been a pretty decent teen mind - fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess " the suits " decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character 's unraveling .
overall , the film does n't stick
because it does n't entertain , it 's confusing , it rarely excites and
it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
oh ,
and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . .
it 's just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
whatever . .
. skip it !
where 's joblo coming from ?
a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) - blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) - the crow ( 9/10 ) - the crow : salvation ( 4/10 )
- lost highway ( 10/10 ) - memento ( 10/10 ) - the others ( 9/10 ) - stir of echoes ( 8/10 )
Example output: N
Example explanation: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").
Q: the great actor james woods once said ( and i 'm paraphrasing ) , " if sex is n't messy , then you 're not doing it right " . a truly profound statement , and one that could be made for the entire mad slasher genre ( just replace " sex " with " your mad slasher film " ) .
for those uninformed souls , the mad slasher genre ( or sub - genre ) is a melding of horror and exploitation elements put to the service of a plot that follows an identical outline : a usually masked but always crazed killer stalks and kills attractive teens a la halloween .
urban legend is a mad slasher flick , but one that is so sanitary , bloodless , and nudity free , that with its irony laden dialogue and beautiful ( though not overly talented ) cast , it more closely resembles an overlong wb television special .
for film makers , gore is one of the two weapons they have at their disposal in a stale , fright - free horror movie , as stephen king once said ( again paraphrasing ) " if you ca n't scare your audience , gross em ' out , if you ca n't do that , make em ' laugh " .
alas , urban legend succeeds only at the latter , though not by intention .
i actually find the fact that this film became a minor success ( $ 40 million domestic box office gross ) more frightening than anything in it .
it seems that audiences ' tastes have been whittled down to such a degree that any movie even claiming to be scary is given the benefit of the doubt .
the promotion for urban legend sure promised thrills , but
how can anyone with a three digit iq argue that it provides them .
unfortunately , these kinds of flicks will continue to be produced because people no longer have expectations ; one idiotic super - hyped blockbuster flick after another has desensitized audiences to the point where films do n't need to do anything more than promise a good time without the added pressure of delivering .
if anyone disagrees i would love for them to explain the box office successes of shit like batman and robin , wild wild west , and godzilla .
but forget all that , it goes without saying that mad slasher films ( or any other exploitation off - shoot ) will be made without an ounce of craft ( especially considering the sheer volume that are produced ) .
allow me to present you with the real fault of the mad slasher film :
the lack of enthusiastic exploitation .
these flicks are n't harnessed with any lofty aspirations , so why not break free and give your audience a bloody good time ?
sadly out of the literally hundreds made , i would estimate that maybe three are at all worth while .
and urban legend would certainly not be included amongst those three .
despite its considerable production value and the absence of any boom mics slipping into frame , it is just as awful as any no budget entry in the slasher sweepstakes . as far as the possibility of some good natured exploitation urban legend 's setting alone offers a myriad of promising possibilities : it takes place on a college campus , which is always an appropriate playground for the crazed killer .
you see , the campus is a community made up almost entirely of young people all in the midst of strange hormonal surges percolating beneath the surface .
all those young people are growing up together , going through all kinds of inexplicable emotional highs and lows , so naturally some weirdness is expected .
all the better for that elusive crazed killer .
coupled with the copious amounts of scantily clad coeds running around , and the introduction of a little exploitation into the proceedings should be a relatively easy task .
but alas ,
urban legend is not only idiotic and clich ? ?
full
; it 's way too clean , a slasher flick for the whole family with
no nudity , little gore , and much stupidity
.
this is the kind of movie where the killer drags dead victims from the scene of the crime for no reason other than , i dunno , exercise .
it 's the kind of movie where the villain calmly purses a running - like - the - wind - prey , yet still manages to catch that prey through some really awful editing techniques .
it 's the kind of movie where characters run into each other just as a loud clash reverberates on the soundtrack .
i really wish filmmakers would just retire that whole loud - noise - jump - scare thing .
yes the audience jumps , momentarily frightened , but would n't anyone if a loud sonic boom suddenly infiltrated a quiet room .
i lost all hope for the possibility of any genuine scares in urban legend about ten minutes in when i caught a glimpse of the killer .
apparently filmmakers are running out of creative ways to disguise their mad slashers .
in scream it was a ghost mask ( scary enough )
, in i know what you did last summer it was a fisher man 's rain slicker ( in the middle of summer no less ) , and in urban legend the disguise sinks to the level of mel brooks parody
: the villain wears an oversized parka with a fury hood ( ooh ? ? ?
scary ) intended to conceal his / her identity .
for urban legend 2 i humbly suggest a donald duck costume .
though i must admit , urban legend does have a winning premise for what could have been a somewhat entertaining exploitation film .
the film 's killer slices and dices comely college students to the tune of famous urban legends ( you know , like the babysitter gets threatening phone calls only to find that they 're coming from inside the house ) .
i wo n't spoil the surprise as to what urban legends are used , after all the film does offer fine 2 : 00 am cable viewing if you happen to be intoxicated enough . sad to say , it does n't include my favorite urban legend : a fairly graphic antidote concerning richard gere and a very unhappy gerbil .
now that would be scary .
before i leave you , i would like to bring to your attention
the third most irritating thing about the film ( the first being the lack of craft , the second the lack of exploitation ) -- its characters , all of whom are just about the most annoying group of people i 've ever spent an evening with .
only jared leto ( looking like a carbon copy of rob lowe from back in the day ) and alicia witt , as the resilient heroine , avoid vexatiousness .
the most annoying of the bunch is a tie between noxima girl rebecca gayheart and sitcom star michael rosenbaum , as a supremely irritating lout
( so irritating
i actually cheered his painful death , and i am not a cruel person ) .
ironically those aggravating sacks of human waste provide the only entertainment in the film ; if viewed as a vicarious fantasy urban legend can be mildly entertaining .
after all this is a movie that features the kind of faux hipsters i ca n't stand getting slaughtered , which is at least better than watching an entire film about people
i ca n't stand not getting slaughtered .
A:
N