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Campire Tales (August 2/00)

Although I'm not sure which came first, Campfire Tales and Urban Legend are unmistakably similar. Both are about - what else? - urban legends and the gruesome manner in which people tend to die in such stories.

Campfire Tales is a series of just that; campfire tales. Four kids involved in a car accident bide their time telling stories around a campfire while waiting for help. The film shifts between footage of the four kids and the stories they tell. Neither is very scary.

All four of the stories (and also the wraparound plot) are entertaining in a sort of "hey, I've heard of that one before" kind of way. Don't go looking for much more than that, though. The actors give it their all, I must say. Glenn Quinn (former Roseanne star) is quite convincing as a rebel caught up in a ghost story. He seemed about as confused as I was. Even the explanation to that last story was a little out there.

As none of the movies are particularly scary, it's the actors that have to make them work. And for the most part they do. One story features one of my favorites, Ron Livingston (of Swingers and Office Space). In that story, two honeymooners in an RV find themselves under attack from strange creatures. I don't want to spoil the ending, but this is another example of a story that was also in Urban Legend.

I guess I can't really fault the movie for being similar to Urban Legend since I don't know which came first. But I can fault the flick for being the opposite of scary. Yeah, it's entertaining, but some of the "surprise endings" to the stories are really lame.

out of

© David Nusair