Corrected entry: Natalie and her friend once forced another driver off the road, resulting in an accident that killed the other driver. Natalie and the friend then admitted this to the police, and their punishment was... ONE YEAR'S PROBATION?. Is the American justice system really this lenient?
Corrected entry: Paul complains after the dean kicks him off the paper about how he won't be able to become a writer without a body of work, and needs to be writing on the paper to get that. In the party scene, the man whose dog is murdered gives the speech about how Paul just wants to take advantage of a couple of deaths, and that Paul is about to graduate in a few weeks and has not written anything real yet. If Paul was about to graduate in three weeks he would have enough articles and being kicked off the paper is not really a punishment.
Correction: Having enough writing to graduate, and having enough writing to get a job are entirely different things. I've written thousands of pages in college, but do not have a job writing, because I was not published for the general public.
Corrected entry: Right before the first murder, the woman is at a gas station that is completely empty except for the scary attendant. After she is killed, it is said on the news that the police are looking for the attendant at the gas station where she was last seen. She and the attendant were the only ones at the gas station, so if they haven't talked to him, no one else could have seen her there and they'd have no idea that that's where she was.
Correction: As she screeched away after macing the attendant, her petrol cap was still open. When her car was discovered by the police they must have assumed she was filling up, so went to the closest petrol station to speak to the proprietor.
Also the attendant had her credit card.
Corrected entry: When Natalie and Brenda are looking at old Stanley Hall and hear moaning, they back away. The culprit, Damon, is suddenly behind them. As the noise was coming from just inside the building, how did Damon magically appear behind the girls in the space of seconds? No one is that fast.
Correction: He was throwing his voice, much like a good ventriliquist can, and made it seem it was coming from inside the building. He was in fact behind them the whole time.
Corrected entry: If an entire floor of students were murdered by a deranged teacher (in Stanley Hall), no amount of money could buy off each and every one of the families. It would only take one to kick up a huge fuss, go to the press and generally cause havoc for the university. It definitely wouldn't be swept under the carpet and forgotten about.
Correction: Since the movie is told as an urban legend, it is up in the air if the Stanley Hall Massacre actually happened or not.
Corrected entry: The killer's face is masked by the parka hood, but when we find out it is Brenda, the hood no longer hides her face. The hood should still make her face disappear because it was masking the face to everyone, not just the audience.
Correction: Not quite. If you watch when The main girl and the janitor are in the car when the killer is trying to push them off the road, when the killer is driving next to them there is a split second where it shows that the killer appears to have a balaclava on. Who's to say she just didnt take it off when she wanted to finally be unmasked ?
Corrected entry: At the end where the killer cuts Natalie's stomach open, she screams through the choker. Later, she shows no signs of pain or even the wound.
Correction: This kind of entry was already corrected before. Paul walks into the room, after Reese is stabbed, and Natalie unties herself and gets up. When she gets up, look at the bottom of the screen, and you'll see some blood on Natalie's stomach. Also, since Reese is close to death, and Brenda threatens to shoot someone, Natalie probably wont be thinking about her cut.
Corrected entry: When Brenda is going to cut out one of Natalie's vital organs, she cuts her stomach with a scalpel. Obviously, this would hurt a lot, but Natalie nor anyone else dresses the wound and there is no sign of blood.
Correction: When Paul walks in after Reese is stabbed, Natalie unties herself and gets up, look at the bottom of the screen, there IS some blood on Natalie's stomach. Also, since Brenda has a loaded gun, and she's about to shoot Natalie and/or Paul, Natalie's cut would be the least of her worries.
Corrected entry: Reese was only walking away for a few seconds before the killer cuts the Dean's heels, at which he screams loudly. How did Reese, who couldn't have been more than 10 feet away, not hear this?
Correction: If you listen closely you can hear a door shut. Since they are in a parking garage it's likely that Reese went through the door to get back inside the building. And since we are talking about the Dean of school it's a safe bet that his parking spot is one of the ones next to the door.
Corrected entry: Natalie's roommate Tosh is strangled to death, and then her wrists are slashed. Because she is a goth the school officials assume she committed suicide by slitting her wrists. However, it's quite easy to tell if someone's been strangled - they couldn't have just dismissed it as suicide and be done with it.
Correction: The reason her wrists were slit was to make it appear like a suicide. Most of the bruising associated with strangling doesn't show up immediately, sometimes even days later during autopsy. By finding a body with the wrists slit, they would not have done an autopsy, as they believed no foul-play had been committed. Also, even if they noticed the slight, if any, bruising around the neck, her alleged suicide was the primary cause of death, and might have been overlooked.
Corrected entry: Can some please explain to me why, despite all the deaths occurring at the New England college, there was NOT ONE POLICEMAN EVER PRESENT at the school?
Correction: In my experience at a small New England college (not the one in the movie), they're terrified of bad publicity. Local law enforcement wouldn't get involved unless the college asked them too, and then they would act reluctantly. Granted, there was no "series of murders" at my school, but officials worked very hard to cover up an attempted murder.
Corrected entry: Sasha says Michelle was listening to her show when she died, but Michelle is actually listening to a tape when she's killed. Unless Brenda stopped to take the tape out (unlikely), this would still have been in when the car was found.
Correction: This isn't an actual mistake: Sasha was repeating some gossip that she heard, and has no bearing on the film itself.
Corrected entry: How exactly was Brenda going to frame Professor Wexler for the murders? Unless she somehow managed to convince the police that he committed suicide by cutting himself open with an axe then stuffed himself into Paul's trunk, it seems fairly unlikely.
Correction: She probably was going to make out that he fled the campus when he realised he was going to get caught, and would dump the body somewhere he would not be found.
Corrected entry: The Dean and Reese interview Natalie about her room mate's death and advise Natalie that it was suicide as there was "no evidence of foul play." This is ridiculous as it would not be up to them. Local law enforcement would have jurisdiction and utilize a forensics team to determine what happened. The FBI would probably also be involved given the campus history. The Dean and campus Security Guard would have no say whatsoever regarding case particulars.
Correction: They have no bearing on the outcome of the case and the forensic investigation would still go on. The dean and Reese were just trying to make Natalie feel safer and stop worrying about her roomate's death.
Corrected entry: When Paul and Natalie are looking for information on the campus massacre they discover the back issues of the campus paper for that year are missing and wonder what to do next. What was wrong with the Internet? There would certainly be SOMETHING about the campus massacre that would have helped.
Correction: This is character's mistaken judgement, not a movie mistake.
Corrected entry: When Sasha is running away from the killer she falls to the bottom of the stairs, leaving her in the lobby. We later see Natalie run in through an entrance in the lobby, so why didn't Sasha run out this way instead of going into the lift and back upstairs into the building?
Correction: She didn't run out that front door for the same reason why people always seem to run upstairs. They are scared and not thinking straight. Not a mistake, she is just dumb or scared.
Corrected entry: Why did Brenda kill Michelle straight away, the one who killed her boyfriend, while she mentally and physically tortures Natalie, who was just a passenger in the car?
Correction: Maybe in her convoluted mind, she blamed Natalie more. Or she could have had easier access to Brenda to kill her. Or she figured it would be fun to torture someone who she had managed to befriend and then therefore, she wouldn't be a suspect. This type of logic isn't a mistake.
Easier access to Natalie? She was in the car with Michelle alone. And she could have just as easily befriended Michelle instead. Her mind was so convoluted she couldn't comprehend who was actually responsible for her boyfriends death but could come up with an elaborate plan to befriend a girl just to kill her friends to mentally torture her? Right.
Corrected entry: When Natalie and Paul go into the professor's office and they go into his special props room. Natalie sees the axe and tells Paul to look. Then they both think that the professor is the killer. How would they know the killer used an axe if they were not at the first murder scene and the murderer didn't use an axe when killing Damon?
Correction: It was publicised that the first victim was decapitated with an axe. I believe one of the other characters mentions it right after the murder.
Corrected entry: Not really a mistake, just something that bothers me. Why would you cut someone's head off while they are driving fast? Since the decapitation kills the driver, and the murderer is in the backseat where she cannot control the SUV, wouldn't this cause the SUV to crash, possibly killing the murderer as well? By just looking at how fast the SUV was going when the girl was beheaded you'd think it would at least hit a tree or go over an embankment.
Correction: Actually the driver hits the brakes when she notices the figure in the back seat. So the car stopped moving.
So the killer should have been thrown into the front or through the window.
Corrected entry: The killer wears a hooded parka to mask his/her identity. Oddly enough, even though the movie takes place in April and it seems to be warm weather, EVERYONE in this town owns the same hooded parka! In one bizarre scene, a menacing figure in the hooded parka and high leather boots slips off the jacket, revealing herself to be a girl in a bathing suit going for a swim! Who wears a parka to go for a swim?
Correction: Several parts of this mistake are wrong. For one thing, it is not "warm weather", there are two rain storms in the few days the film covers. Secondly, the girl at the pool has a blue t-shirt on, not a bathing suit. Finally, since it was wet weather, is it all that unlikely that people are carrying warm jackets around with them (bear in mind that no one but the killer and swimming pool girl actually wear theirs)? The similarities between the coats is strange, but hardly a mistake in itself. Maybe they were on sale.
Correction: Indeed it is for this kind of offense. It was a first offense for both parties, and neither had any previous records of violence at all. Plus they admitted it to the police and didnt try to hide it. Furthermore, in order to be brought to trial in America, most states require that Mens Rea (Criminal Intent) is established. There was no criminal intent here, they were playing a prank and it went wrong. They did not physically force him off the road, he was scared because they were following him and he lost control of the car. The punishment was very fitting, and pretty close to what someone would get had this happened in real life.