“I know what you did last summer.”




I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

1997

Dir. Jim Gillespie
Screenplay: Kevin Williamson
With: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Philippe, Freddie Prinze Jr., Muse Watson, Bridgette Wilson, Johnny Galecki, Patti D'arbanville

What is it about:
A group of teenagers are having a grand ol’ time on their graduation night until things get out of hand: they hit someone on the road. So no one gets caught, they throw the body in the sea and live on with the dark spectre over their shoulders. A year later, during summer vacation, one by one, they are haunted and attacked by an unknown person out for revenge for what happened last summer!

Cephas’ notes and spoilers:
This film is based on the young adult’s book and Williamson attempts to create a decent follow-up to his last film: SCREAM. (The sequel to SCREAM will be out on Dec. 12, 1997) Unfortunately it seems that Williamson maybe wrote this one too soon after SCREAM and put some of the scenes froM SCREAM into this film. (Like the hero girl falling out of a second floor window and boucing off something below breaking her fall; the hero only had sex once - like in SCREAM; all the friends are suspects.) There are some sxcenes in here that just plain suck. Like, how can the killer get each and every dead body out of the scene and to his boat without anyone seeing him do this and how does he do this so dam fast?? There is a scene where one girl is walking through a dark retail store and the killer turns off the lights while the girl is walking past a group of manakins. Suddenly one of the mannakins is realy the killer and attacks! Wait a minute: I thought he just switched the lights off? So how could he get ahead of her, get on the pedastel, put plastic over himself to hide? Then the same girl’s boyfriend dies on a balcony during the beauty show. The girlffriend sees it happen, we see it happen. It seems brutal. But the police never investigate it no matter what. They take a quick look and do not look where a person could hide. Fine, I’ll buy that for the story’s sake, but why isn’t there a lot of blood for a brutal death? Oh, sorry, there was one droop of blood on the railing. My bad. One drop of blood, the poor boy, I didn’t know he was attacked by a vampire! I won’t even mention the poor melodrama and lack of intelligence that this film exhibits.

I will give the film this, however, it got my date to jump a few times although I simply laughed out loud! I knew what would happen every time! We can’t really guess on th ekiller’s identity because we are given any information until the end. That isn’t a “keep ‘em guessing” type slasher, that is a “I think I’ll keep the killer secret because I have no way of making them guess afterwards” type slasher. At least in SCREAM we had some details to work with. The ending in this film - although it should have been cool - it wasn’t. It lacked intelligence. It was just all too expected. If they make the sequel start exactly where the first one ens then maybe it will be worth watching - on video.

Cephas’ Rating:
WAIT FOR VIDEO..
I just wasn’t very impressed with this film at all. I like to be impressed by films and this is probably the second film I ever saw in the theatre that I was very diassapointed with. The first was DELORES CLAIRBOURNE and I try to be very selective with the films that I see in the theatre. I talked with a couple others I know that saw this film and they weren’t very impressed either. Or...maybe there is just something wrong with us. Maybe we forgot to take our prozac before film?


For more on this film, go see the following site:
The Official site for I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER