Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005) Horror Ghost

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005) - It's important to note that these thoughts are as I watch the film. They are not designed to be a review necessarily but more as thoughts while watching. There is so much spoiler information and guesses of what will come that you should be wary of reading this prior to seeing the film. You have been warned.
It's 1969 in small town America and Mary and her friends have not been the most popular of girls in the local high school. Some sudden attention from the jocks has her on a high because the guy she likes Willy has broken up with the prom queen to take her to the dance. It seems like it is going to be a magical night when Willie and the boys spike the punch of the three girls and a cruel alternative plan is revealed. Mary walking outside with Willy notices her friends all but passed out in the alley behind the dance and the Queen of the prom there beckoning to get the girls into the car. Mary runs and tries to hide in the school. Willie catches up to her and in the physical altercation that follows he accidentally kills her. Instead of doing the right thing he hides the body. Cut to teen girls in the bedroom during a sleepover telling the story. It is a legend.
  Samantha  (Kate Mara a young 22) is one of the young women telling and talking about Urban Legends. They makes some mentions to set the mood and also reference movies like Candyman (1992), before talking about how you do the Bloody Mary legend where you stand in front of the mirror with the lights out and say her name three times. She will appear and have a corpse face, and if you look at her she will drag you into her darkness unless you turn the light back on. Now the film immediately after setting up the rules breaks them because sure Samantha says "Bloody Mary" three times but she is lounging around with her friends not standing in the dark in front of a mirror. There is a desire by writers Mike Daugherty and Dan Harris to connect what is made up urban legend with well known stories in urban legend. This so he can blend the old with this new story they are trying to tell.
  Dougherty is so much the thing these days having written the already Halloween classic Trick r' Treat (2007), the wildly entertaining and I may say turning classic very quickly Krampus (2015) before graduating to blockbuster size films with Godzilla: King of Monsters this year. So when we cut to a creepy Bloody Mary appearing outside the house it is a head scratcher. Then when Mom comes in to wake the girls up they are all gone. A montage of scenes shows that the girls went missing maybe not to be found again. The girls suddenly came back and say they woke up in the cellar of the old mill, mind you with date rape drug in there system. Its weird because what we have here is the current story mirroring the events of 1969. This I am sure is on purpose as the Director Mary Lambert is going to integrate it all. Although I am wondering why include the urban legends stuff at all. It does not necessarily fit with the ghost story they are telling here and thus gives sort of a false read of the film.
  So my mind is going at this point, this seems like a classic misdirection as I pause the film to write this. The step father in the is family is Bill Owens (Ed Marinaro), running for mayor and I have a theory. Bill is Willie from the opening, we know his wife Pam was a prom queen so that matches. Then the fact the girls were drugged, maybe Bill never got over his need to drug girls like in 1969? What if the POV that seemed a bit creeper in its gaze when he checked on the girls the night they disappeared was a red flag purposely put in the film by director Mary Lambert?  It could be the current jocks who were established as being pissed at Samantha for a school article she wrote are the culprits. I think that was a misdirection though, creepy guilty of murder step dad is the suspect I am leading towards at this point. It is possible though. A parallel works here and I think there is a couple stories really taking hold at the same time.
  Talk in school is that the girls may have done the whole thing themselves but we quickly learn it was the jocks getting back at Samantha for her article. Twin brother David (Robert Vito) is trying to defend his sister but is ill equipped to do anything. The jocks are not pleased with the outcome worried that the girls will tell on them and get them into trouble. By the way this is exactly what should happen. All should be disciplined and kicked off the team but this is not the route the film takes. Instead the secret is kept so we can talk about this all happening before. Then we start to have incidents that are all very urban legend. One jock is fried in a tanning booth. Heather  (Audra Lea Keener) the lead jocks girlfriend although her relationship with Samantha has faded from when they were kids suddenly has the real life problem of a spider laying its eggs in her face. The absolute go for it attitude of the film makers having Heather pull off her face is pretty cool.
  There is a bit here on the effects of trauma but it is a bit over shadowed the linear story of the jocks wanting to blame people for the deaths of their friends. Instead we get even more urban legend deaths, like the guy getting electrocuted by pissing on a high voltage fence. The mystery seems to get bigger and bigger with Samantha and David thinking there is some conspiracy going on. There research leads them to the original disappearance in 1969 but it seems like all of the adults are suspects, like the step father and then the coach of the football team starts showing up being creepy himself. The children will always suffer the sins of their parents. The inexplicably builds this connection between the past and present even introducing premonitions that Samantha receives. So maybe this is really a ghost story where 35 years later the first crime is found out by the ghosts coming looking for justice? It is but is is wrapped up unnecessarily in urban legend talking points that sort of take away from a very reasonable revenge ghost story. Of course without all these extra shiny objects one might be reminded of the movie Stir of Echoes (1999) where a ghost gets her story told by using a neighborhood guy who was put under hypnosis to get revenge. The vengeful ghost is a motif after all so there will be many examples of this.
  The film takes the interconnectedness of all things and stands it on its head with what seems like a story that is not sure what it wants to be. Is this urban legends? No not really all those parts seemed disconnected from the real plot. A revenge ghost story? Yes it is a ghost that for some reason has to be reconciled at this time for no real reason other than that the children of the perpetrators are the same age as the victim when the original crime was committed. I am not really going to recommend this film but it isn't horrible just a bit too much.