Urban Legend is a teen slasher film centered around a series of grisly murders at the fictional Pendleton University. The story follows Natalie Simon, a college student who becomes increasingly suspicious when her classmates begin dying in ways that resemble popular urban legends.
The film opens with a chilling scene in which a student is killed by an ax-wielding figure hiding in her car’s back seat—mirroring the well-known “killer in the backseat” legend. As the campus reels from the incident, students remain largely unaware of the pattern until more deaths occur. These include a student found hanging above her roommate’s bed (referencing the “roommate suicide” legend) and another who dies after consuming Pop Rocks and soda, echoing a famous urban myth.
Natalie begins to connect the dots, especially after realizing that she and her deceased friend Michelle were involved in a fatal car accident years earlier, which they tried to cover up. She suspects that someone is using urban legends as inspiration for a revenge-driven killing spree.
With help from her friend Paul, a campus journalist, Natalie investigates the university’s past and discovers a long-buried story of a massacre tied to a supposed urban legend class taught by the eccentric Professor Wexler. However, as more students die, Paul’s credibility falters, and Natalie finds herself isolated and unsure whom to trust.
The climax reveals that Brenda, Natalie’s seemingly sweet and supportive friend, is the killer. Brenda was the fiancée of the man killed in the car accident Natalie and Michelle caused. Driven mad with grief and rage, she meticulously planned the murders using urban legends as her blueprint. She captures Natalie and prepares to make her the final victim in a staged kidney theft legend but is thwarted just in time.
In the film’s epilogue, a new group of students at a different university is shown discussing the Pendleton murders as an urban legend themselves—until Brenda, now under a new identity, appears among them, suggesting the cycle may not be over.
