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yendiI Know What You Did Last Summer. 1997 Directed by Jim Gillespie. Written by Kevin Williamson. Released by Columbia.
In general, I'm a big fan of horror movies from screenwriter Kevin Williamson -- the first two Scream movies, The Faculty, even Cursed are all movies I enjoy. I Know What You Did Last Summer is the exception.
We start with the events of the titular Last Summer. Recent high school grads Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Ryan Phillipe* are celebrating the fact that Gellar has won a beauty pageant. They do so by getting blasted, telling horror stories, and driving down a deserted beachside road, where they promptly run over some random dude. They all agree that reporting the crime will ruin their lives, so they take the honorable path and decide to dump the body into the ocean. When the body turns out to be less dead than expected, they take the still honorable path of doing nothing about it, and they agree to never speak of this incident again. And that's the end of that.
Oh, wait. It's not. We cut to next summer. Hewitt has come home from college after a year spent feeling guilty but still miraculously avoiding the Freshman Fifteen. She comes back home and gets a mysterious note saying "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Naturally, this freaks her out, so she decides to visit the local department store where Gellar's sister (played by Brigitte Wilson) works, hoping to get the number of her friend in New York. Because she somehow went her entire freshman year of college without thinking of her, or something. Turns out that Gellar, also haunted by guilt, never made it to NYC, and decided to drop out and become a shopgirl. They track down Phillipe, who has stayed local, and we now get a little bit of exposition. A body was found floating in the bay, so we assume the guy they killed was this guy named David. Oh, and the one guy they all hated in high school (and who almost stumbled upon the crime scene) is now in the fishing business with Prinze.
We'll call this guy Victim, because after a confrontation in which the "heroes" accuse him of sending the letter, he gets killed by the Gorton Fisherman and his Murderous Fishhook of Doom. The four leads, unaware of this, all part ways in anger. Clearly, this murder business is stressful on friendships.
Phillipe goes to the gym, and while he's in the shower, someone steals his jacket and leaves a photo of his Beemer with the words "I Know" over it in its place. When he runs outside, he gets run over by his own car, and ends up in the hospital. His friends realize that this is more serious than they'd originally thought, so head to the boondocks to see David's sister. She's creepy in a "potential suspect" sort of way, not helped by the fact that she's played by Anne Heche. Although she gives them a nasty case of the willies, she does reveal that David had a handsome friend named Billy. They suspect that he might be the stalker.
That night, the killer sneaks into Gellar's room and . . . cuts off her hair! It's not a killer! It's a college prankster! When she calls her friends, on the way over, they hear scratching coming from the trunk of their car, so they open it up to find the body of Victim, covered in crabs! Okay, I take it back. It's a college prankster and a killer. And a floor wax.
Later, of course, the body and the crabs all vanish. As does the blood and any other evidence. The killer needs to sell his cleaning solution in stores.
That night, at the same crappy local pageant that Gellar won the year before, she's on stage handing over her crown in front of an audience comprised of local hicks. Philippe decides that he'll "protect" her by watching from the balcony of the theatre, which is closed off. While he's up there, he gets attacked by the Gorton Fisherman while poor Gellar is forced to watch. The crowd of excited hicks, unaware of the murderer, are too busy cheering on the contest for her to get to the back to save Philippe**. By the time she gets there, he's gone, as is the murderer.
A nice cop offers to drive her home, but he sees a broken-down car, and stops to help. It turns out that the driver is one of those self-sufficient types who hates offers of help, and he kills the cop. Oh, wait. It was the Gorton Fisherman, who smartly knew to lie in wait on just the right road, and to wait until just the right car came along. He chases Gellar, who just happens to end up at the department store where she and her sister work. Alas, the killer makes it in as well, and he kills both Gellar and Wilson.
Meanwhile, Hewitt goes to visit Prinze, only to see that the latter's boat is named "Billy Blue," just like the friend Heche talked about. Oh noes! Maybe her guilt-ridden friend is really the killer! She runs away from him, and a helpful older fisherman comes to her rescue. She gets on his boat, and we get more exposition! Turns out that the guy named David who washed up on shore was really a different victim. A few years before, he'd killed his girlfriend, and the girl's father had killed him in revenge. The kids ran over a murderer! And now he's back as the Gorton Fisherman, as well as the nice guy who just rescued Hewitt! Oh Noes!
Fortunately, he forgot about Prinze***. Freddie shows up to save the day, chopping off the hook hand of the killer. The killer ends up overboard, where no body is ever recovered. Oh, we get the bonus news, expositon-wise, that Prinze really was Billy Blue, using that fake name to visit David's sister out of guilt over apparently murdering the kid.
It wouldn't be a bad horror movie without a false ending, however, so we get a scene in which Julie, back at college, gets another creepy looking letter. After it turns out to just be a party invitation, she heads to the shower, where she finds the words "I Still Know" written in the condensation. And then, just as she starts to worry, The Gorton Fisherman breaks through the mirror and attacks her! Fade to black and to a bad sequel (which will get its own review, as it's a much different kind of crap).
I Know What You Did Last Summer had the potential to be an interesting little thriller. If they'd just focused more on the way the shared guilt tears apart the four friends, this movie could have been something special. Instead, we get ten-minute long murder sequences and silly plot twists. Almost every cliche -- the false scare, the misleadingly creepy characters, the convenient timing of the killer -- is exploited here, but there's very little in the way of originality. And it's hard to believe that anyone thought the killer in this movie was going to come across as anything but silly; Gorton is not an unknown brand, and their mascot is a relatively significant icon.
And don't even get me started on the fact that the kids somehow thought the fifty-year-old they hit and threw into the water was really a twenty-year-old. Or that a man who had previous killed to avenge his son and who presumably only wants vengeance on his attackers offs a cop and two innocents in his quest.
Williamson (loosely adapting a novel by Lois Duncan) has shown himself to be a much smarter writer, but he cuts corners here. Director Jim Gillespie (who has already shown up in this series with the awful Venom, reviewed back in January) is a perpetual hack, spending way more time perfecting shots of Hewitt and Gellar's breasts than worrying about pacing, timing, or getting believable performances out of anyone.
That said, I do want to spend a minute mentioning the breakout stars of this movie, the talents who, when combined, are best known as Jennifer Love Hewitt's cleavage. Her breasts have a bigger role than most of the actors, and actually emote better than Gellar (who completely phoned in her performance here) or Phillipe. Thanks to them, Hewitt went from "the Party of Five girl who isn't Neve Campbell or Lacey Chabert" to minor stardom. Alas, she squandered most of her future chances (Time of Your Life, The Tuxedo, Garfield) and would probably be a distant memory if not for snagging that role in The Ghost Whisperer.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is often lumped into the post-Scream "smart slasher" genre, but it's about as stupid as a movie gets. The screenplay was written prior to Scream, and doesn't even try for the same level of sophistication. It's a straightforward (and mediocre) slasher with some good teen dialogue here and there. But it's nothing special, and certainly not a film worthy of two sequels.
*I could give you the names of their characters, but that would imply they have interesting personalities and distinctive traits.
**How, exactly, she planned to save him when she's already shown a complete lack of any useful skills is beyond me. Presumably, she was planning on channeling her knowledge from playing Buffy.
***Something most of us wish we could do.
In general, I'm a big fan of horror movies from screenwriter Kevin Williamson -- the first two Scream movies, The Faculty, even Cursed are all movies I enjoy. I Know What You Did Last Summer is the exception.
We start with the events of the titular Last Summer. Recent high school grads Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Ryan Phillipe* are celebrating the fact that Gellar has won a beauty pageant. They do so by getting blasted, telling horror stories, and driving down a deserted beachside road, where they promptly run over some random dude. They all agree that reporting the crime will ruin their lives, so they take the honorable path and decide to dump the body into the ocean. When the body turns out to be less dead than expected, they take the still honorable path of doing nothing about it, and they agree to never speak of this incident again. And that's the end of that.
Oh, wait. It's not. We cut to next summer. Hewitt has come home from college after a year spent feeling guilty but still miraculously avoiding the Freshman Fifteen. She comes back home and gets a mysterious note saying "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Naturally, this freaks her out, so she decides to visit the local department store where Gellar's sister (played by Brigitte Wilson) works, hoping to get the number of her friend in New York. Because she somehow went her entire freshman year of college without thinking of her, or something. Turns out that Gellar, also haunted by guilt, never made it to NYC, and decided to drop out and become a shopgirl. They track down Phillipe, who has stayed local, and we now get a little bit of exposition. A body was found floating in the bay, so we assume the guy they killed was this guy named David. Oh, and the one guy they all hated in high school (and who almost stumbled upon the crime scene) is now in the fishing business with Prinze.
We'll call this guy Victim, because after a confrontation in which the "heroes" accuse him of sending the letter, he gets killed by the Gorton Fisherman and his Murderous Fishhook of Doom. The four leads, unaware of this, all part ways in anger. Clearly, this murder business is stressful on friendships.
Phillipe goes to the gym, and while he's in the shower, someone steals his jacket and leaves a photo of his Beemer with the words "I Know" over it in its place. When he runs outside, he gets run over by his own car, and ends up in the hospital. His friends realize that this is more serious than they'd originally thought, so head to the boondocks to see David's sister. She's creepy in a "potential suspect" sort of way, not helped by the fact that she's played by Anne Heche. Although she gives them a nasty case of the willies, she does reveal that David had a handsome friend named Billy. They suspect that he might be the stalker.
That night, the killer sneaks into Gellar's room and . . . cuts off her hair! It's not a killer! It's a college prankster! When she calls her friends, on the way over, they hear scratching coming from the trunk of their car, so they open it up to find the body of Victim, covered in crabs! Okay, I take it back. It's a college prankster and a killer. And a floor wax.
Later, of course, the body and the crabs all vanish. As does the blood and any other evidence. The killer needs to sell his cleaning solution in stores.
That night, at the same crappy local pageant that Gellar won the year before, she's on stage handing over her crown in front of an audience comprised of local hicks. Philippe decides that he'll "protect" her by watching from the balcony of the theatre, which is closed off. While he's up there, he gets attacked by the Gorton Fisherman while poor Gellar is forced to watch. The crowd of excited hicks, unaware of the murderer, are too busy cheering on the contest for her to get to the back to save Philippe**. By the time she gets there, he's gone, as is the murderer.
A nice cop offers to drive her home, but he sees a broken-down car, and stops to help. It turns out that the driver is one of those self-sufficient types who hates offers of help, and he kills the cop. Oh, wait. It was the Gorton Fisherman, who smartly knew to lie in wait on just the right road, and to wait until just the right car came along. He chases Gellar, who just happens to end up at the department store where she and her sister work. Alas, the killer makes it in as well, and he kills both Gellar and Wilson.
Meanwhile, Hewitt goes to visit Prinze, only to see that the latter's boat is named "Billy Blue," just like the friend Heche talked about. Oh noes! Maybe her guilt-ridden friend is really the killer! She runs away from him, and a helpful older fisherman comes to her rescue. She gets on his boat, and we get more exposition! Turns out that the guy named David who washed up on shore was really a different victim. A few years before, he'd killed his girlfriend, and the girl's father had killed him in revenge. The kids ran over a murderer! And now he's back as the Gorton Fisherman, as well as the nice guy who just rescued Hewitt! Oh Noes!
Fortunately, he forgot about Prinze***. Freddie shows up to save the day, chopping off the hook hand of the killer. The killer ends up overboard, where no body is ever recovered. Oh, we get the bonus news, expositon-wise, that Prinze really was Billy Blue, using that fake name to visit David's sister out of guilt over apparently murdering the kid.
It wouldn't be a bad horror movie without a false ending, however, so we get a scene in which Julie, back at college, gets another creepy looking letter. After it turns out to just be a party invitation, she heads to the shower, where she finds the words "I Still Know" written in the condensation. And then, just as she starts to worry, The Gorton Fisherman breaks through the mirror and attacks her! Fade to black and to a bad sequel (which will get its own review, as it's a much different kind of crap).
I Know What You Did Last Summer had the potential to be an interesting little thriller. If they'd just focused more on the way the shared guilt tears apart the four friends, this movie could have been something special. Instead, we get ten-minute long murder sequences and silly plot twists. Almost every cliche -- the false scare, the misleadingly creepy characters, the convenient timing of the killer -- is exploited here, but there's very little in the way of originality. And it's hard to believe that anyone thought the killer in this movie was going to come across as anything but silly; Gorton is not an unknown brand, and their mascot is a relatively significant icon.
And don't even get me started on the fact that the kids somehow thought the fifty-year-old they hit and threw into the water was really a twenty-year-old. Or that a man who had previous killed to avenge his son and who presumably only wants vengeance on his attackers offs a cop and two innocents in his quest.
Williamson (loosely adapting a novel by Lois Duncan) has shown himself to be a much smarter writer, but he cuts corners here. Director Jim Gillespie (who has already shown up in this series with the awful Venom, reviewed back in January) is a perpetual hack, spending way more time perfecting shots of Hewitt and Gellar's breasts than worrying about pacing, timing, or getting believable performances out of anyone.
That said, I do want to spend a minute mentioning the breakout stars of this movie, the talents who, when combined, are best known as Jennifer Love Hewitt's cleavage. Her breasts have a bigger role than most of the actors, and actually emote better than Gellar (who completely phoned in her performance here) or Phillipe. Thanks to them, Hewitt went from "the Party of Five girl who isn't Neve Campbell or Lacey Chabert" to minor stardom. Alas, she squandered most of her future chances (Time of Your Life, The Tuxedo, Garfield) and would probably be a distant memory if not for snagging that role in The Ghost Whisperer.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is often lumped into the post-Scream "smart slasher" genre, but it's about as stupid as a movie gets. The screenplay was written prior to Scream, and doesn't even try for the same level of sophistication. It's a straightforward (and mediocre) slasher with some good teen dialogue here and there. But it's nothing special, and certainly not a film worthy of two sequels.
*I could give you the names of their characters, but that would imply they have interesting personalities and distinctive traits.
**How, exactly, she planned to save him when she's already shown a complete lack of any useful skills is beyond me. Presumably, she was planning on channeling her knowledge from playing Buffy.
***Something most of us wish we could do.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 04:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:53 pm (UTC)But yeah, all Lois Duncan's thriller books are fantastic. This one actually does deal with the ripping apart of a friendship that yendi mentioned. i definitely recommend it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 02:08 pm (UTC)In the original story, they didn't kill an adult. They ran over a child. And it's the child's older, half-brother who is taking revenge...while he's dating the Jennifer Love Hewitt character.
Much better story. Period. Read it. Actually, Elayna is about at the right age to appreciate it - if she hasn't started on Lois Duncan, get thee to a library. *g*
There are many different versions of the teens-drunk-in-a-car-kill-someone-and-keep-it-secret (I can think of two besides Duncan's, just off the top of my head) and the books are all better than the crap that is this screenplay.
That being said, if I ignore what they did to the plot, I find this movie fun to watch for mocking purposes.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 05:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-22 06:45 pm (UTC)