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yendiI Still Know What You Did Last Summer. 1998. Directed by Danny Cannon. Written by Trey Callaway. Released by Columbia.
Most sequels fail to live up to the high standards set by the original*. But it's hard to believe that the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer could manage to suck so much more than its predecessor, in light of how low the original set the bar. Yet I Still Know What You Did Last Summer somehow manages this feat of qualitative limbo.
Okay, let's start with the obvious suckage here: The title of this movie is simply inaccurate. By the time the events take place, the summer in question is two summers ago. If the title were the worse thing about the movie, I'd be a happy viewer.
We start with the backbone of bad screenplays everywhere: the dream sequence! Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts, along with the rest of her, are in a church, confessing to the events of the first movie (while conveniently omitting certain details, like that whole "hiding the body" thing). Alas, the confessor turns out to Ben Willis, AKA the Gorton Fisherman! What an unexpected twist! Even more unexpectedly, the lead character does not, in fact, die in the first five minutes, instead waking up screaming for her life in the middle of class. Naturally, when a student screams like this, the teacher's reaction is to simply make a snotty remark, and the students all laugh at her instead of showing any concern.
Which, come to think of it, might be the only moment of realism in the movie.
Anyway, it turns out that there is one nice kid in the class, a boy named Will Benson. He follows Hewitt's breasts and offers what comfort he can, as we get the usual exposition about how spooked she is around the anniversary of the hit-and-run from two summers ago and the murders the next year. Then the horror begins -- Freddy Prinze, Jr. shows up! And he still can't act! He mopes a bit, and tries to convince Hewitt to come back to their small hick town. She demurs, because she's scheduled to get the bejeezus scared out of her by her moronic roommate in the next scene, and there's no time for a road trip.
Cue the next scene. In the dark house, Hewitt wakes to a noise. She turns on the lights, which promptly blow out. She then grabs the knife she keeps in the nightstand** and spends the next thirty minutes*** stalking the intruder through the house, only to find that the person she almost kills is her roommate, pop star, Scientologist, and drunk-driving murderess Brandy. Alas, Jennifer Love Hewitt does not stab Brandy to death. Instead, they go out clubbing, where they meet Brandy's boyfriend, Tyrell (played by Mekhi Phifer, who deserves better roles than this). When he offers to dance with Hewitt (at Brandy's request), she declines. At which point Brandy explains to him that, "no means yes."
Seriously.
She fucking tells him, "no means yes."
Have I mentioned that a running plotline involves Tyrell being horny, and Brandy not putting out?
I should jump ahead and note that Brandy lives through this movie. Which is too bad, as there's no character in this film I'd rather see get it more than her. And that includes Jack Black's worst roll ever, which I'll talk about in a bit.
Back to the story. Let's skip the rest of the club scene (only interesting because of a possible Gorton Fisherman sighting), and cut to the next morning, when the girls get a call from the local radio station, offering a prize if they know the capital of Brazil. They say, "Rio." And win the prize.
Yes. Really. Actually, let's skip ahead again. This was a rigged contest, of course. Because the real capital of Brazil, as any American high-school student could tell you, is really São Paulo****. But I do want to point it out now to note that, although the screenwriter of the movie is still a complete moron (for reasons that should already be clear, but which I'll discuss later), he does know the capital of Brazil.
Anyway, Brandy and Hewitt's breasts jump around excitedly because they've won a trip to some island they've never heard of. They bring Tyrell, and want to bring Prinze, but he's too busy moping. Instead, they drag along Will, who clearly has a crush on Hewitt's breasts.
Prinze and his friend Dave hit the road to try to visit Hewitt before she embarks (because of a moronic subplot in which Prinze decides that, even though he's been treating her like crap, he wants to marry Hewitt). Along the way, they find an abandoned car and a dead body. Prinze examines the body, only to realize that it's a dummy (or, as I like to say, "the screenwriter"). As Prinze turns around, he sees the Gorton Fisherman come out of nowhere and hook Dave through the head. The Fisherman then chases Prinze and runs him off the road.
Yes, the killer knew that Prinze would not go on the island, then decide to drive up to propose to Hewitt, then knew exactly where to wait on the hundreds of miles of road to trap him. There's not enough crack on this planet to make that seem believable.
Meanwhile, after some Wacky Travel Hijinks, the four travellers make it to the island, where they learn that this is the off-season, and they're the only guests around. The hotel is staffed by six future victims, whom we meet in rapid succession. There's a boathand who fakes a Jamaican accent, a creepy hotel owner played by Jeffrey Combs, a cute but bitchy bartender, a Voodoo-practicing bellhop, a cleaning lady, and Jack Black as the Dreadlocked Drug-dealing Poolboy. I know that this movie was made before High Fidelity, but I have to say that Black manages to lose the good will earned from that performance here.
After some Wacky Hotel Hijinks, we cut back to the mainland, where Prinze wakes up in the hospital. The cops don't believe his story, as Dave's body was nowhere to be found (and, once again, we have bodies killed without any blood spatter). So Prinze does what anyone would do: he leaves the hospital and pawns the engagement ring for $300 and a handgun.
Back on the island, the killer starts going to work. He kills the boathand on the dock, and then offs the cleaning lady when she discovers some bloody towels.
Hewitt takes a shower, and while she does so, the killer sneaks into the room and puts the body of the boathand into her closet, using the patented Horror Movie Cliche Trap that rigs a bloody body to fall from the ceiling just after the door of the closet opens. Naturally, Hewitt runs to the manager, but when they get back, there's no sign of the body or any blood. Since a real body would have left blood all over the place (not to mention a stench), the manager just accuses Hewitt of going insane. Tyrell accuses her of making it up as well, and we get more drawn-out and whacky shenanigans.
Fortunately, we soon get the death of Jack Black, which is a minor blessing.
The next day, after more of Tyrell acting like an asshole, the girls head to the island gym. Hewitt, doing the only logical thing someone who has survived multiple slasher attacks could do, gets into a tanning bed, puts on an eye shield, and dons headphones, thus completely isolating herself. Brandy goes to use the punching bag. As she's boxing away, she hears strange noises from a couple of rooms away. She goes to investigate, and finds that something in a gym dryer is banging around. She opens it, and finds that it wasn't a pair of sneakers, but the cleaning lady! Oh noes! She screams, but Hewitt, with the headphones, hears nothing. This means, of course, that she's completely unaware when the Fisherman comes in, ties the tanning bed down, and turns it up to the highest setting*****. By the time she figures out what's happening, the killer has left the room.
The two girls scream enough the get the attention of the boys, who run to their rescue. When the gang's back together, they head to the office of the manager, only to find that he's got a machete in his face, and thus can't talk right now. Worse, the only radio on the entire island has been destroyed. After hearing the recap of the first movie and learning about the Fisherman, Tyrell realizes that the killer must be the Voodoo Bellhop, because, well, why not? They set off to find him, and when they see the Voodoo stuff in his room, they realize that he must be the killer, indeed. Because, you know, those heathens are all serial killers.
At this point, the kids split up (smart!), and the power goes out (shock!). The girls find the Voodoo Bellhop, who notes that they got their trivia question wrong. He also somehow convinces them that he's not the killer, probably by not trying to kill them. He adds that he's seen the Gorton Fisherman around the island recently.
Back on the mainland, we see Prinze hijack a boat. Because he somehow knows that the killer is on the island, and that the contest was rigged, and that Hewett must still be alive after three days there.
On the island, we get backstory about Willis before he became the Fisherman. Turns out he used to live on the island, and one day he killed his wife and vanished with his two kids. So we've now seen the murderer retconned from someone out for revenge over his daughter into someone who was always a brutal killer. We also see, alongside the graves of Willis's wife and daughter, a new one for Hewitt. Oh noes! Fortunately, this leads to the showcase scene for Hewitt's breasts, as her now-soaking wet white shirt gets the brunt of the camera angles as she shouts to Ben Willis that he should just come and get her.
That doesn't happen, and while running around, Voodoo Bellhop and Will both vanish. The three survivors stumble upon the cute bartender (named Nancy), who'd gone into hiding, The four of them run around the hotel for a while, until they get to the kitchen, where the killer, lurking in the ventilation area waiting for just this moment, sticks his hook through Tyrell's neck. The three girls naturally decide to run upstairs and hide in the attic, always a better idea than, say, running outside. We get more Wacky Hijinks, this time in the form of collapsing floors and pot plants. This leads to a theoretically tense narrow escape, but no one actually dies. The make it to the safety of the hurricane shelter, only to find that this is where all the dead bodies have somehow ended up!
As they scream, Will shows up, drenched in blood. He says that he was attacked by Voodoo Bellhop, and that he saw the Fisherman wandering around. He also chucks the axe that the girls had scavenged aside. Hewitt starts to tend to his wounds as the other two girls run for a first aid kit. As Hewett examines him, she realizes that he's not actually wounded! Oh noes! What a trick! Will explains that none of the blood is his! That would make him *gasp* a killer!
Meanwhile, Nancy and Brandy are in the lobby, when Voodoo Bellhop shows up, with a tent pole stuck through him. He falls on Nancy, and the Fisherman promptly shows up and shoves the pole through her as well. He then chases after Brandy, while Will provides us with the "explanation" for what's happened.
See, Will Benson is actually Will, Ben's son. Clever, huh? His dad sent him to the same college as Hewitt and placed him in the same classes just to make sure that he was in the right place to be there to go on the trip. Naturally, they knew that Prinze would turn down the trip, and that Hewitt would ask Will instead. It's the most brilliant plan ever! Especially since Ben, who had never exactly been rich, had to spend tens of thousands of dollars setting it all up.
We now come to the climax, as Prinze tries to save Hewitt, but the gun jams. Will captures Prinze and holds him from behind, while Ben lunges with his hook. If you've ever seen even one professional wrestling match, you know what'll happen, as Prinze elbows his way out of the hold at the last second, and the hook gets buried in Prinze's torso. Ben has now killed two of his three known family members! Meanwhile, Hewitt has gotten ahold of the gun, and figured out how to make it work. She pumps Ben full of lead, and he falls into the grave he'd originally dug for Hewitt. Irony!
Brandy stumbles out of the hotel, somehow still alive against all audience hopes, and the heroes are rescued by the Coast Guard. We cut to sometime in the future, with Hewitt and Prinze cohabiting. After a bunch of false scares and a silly scene in which Prinze seems to get a little too much pleasure out of his electric toothbrush, Hewitt sits down on her bed, only to be grabbed by the hook and yanked under! Oh noes!
God, what a load of crap. The entire setup, backstory, and concept here is just plain ludicrous. Director Danny Cannon is one of the better directors on CSI, but he seems to have no feel for how to bring a movie together (his other notable film, Judge Dredd, is equally sloppy). And Trey Callaway turns in one of the worst scripts ever to get approved. That this is his only big-screen flick to date (he's mostly relegated to writing episodes of mediocre TV shows) is a minor blessing. There are more plotholes, dumb character decisions, and bad lines of dialogue here than any theatrical release deserves.
The cast, of course, doesn't do much to help. There are some talented folks here, but they don't have much to work with. And it's hard to believe that Jack Black and Jeffrey Combs are putting much effort into their horrible characters anyway. Phifer does a good job, but since his character is a complete asshole, it's hard to muster much sympathy for him. Brandy continues to show all the acting talent of a pop singer. And, as always, Hewitt is outperformed by her own pair of breasts, both of which clearly spent more time in acting school than she did.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is utter shite, not even coming close to the stunning mediocrity of its predecessor. With a script that couldn't have been written in more than a few days, direction that borders on the nonsensical, and a cast that's clearly in it to cash an easy paycheck, there's no reason to waste time on this film.
*Insert usual rant about Bride of Frankenstein, Godfather Part 2, Addams Family Values, and Empire Strikes Back.
**Deep down, I was expecting her to pull a vibrator from the nightstand instead.
***Okay, it's not a thirty-minute scene. But it feels like one.
****That's because American High school students are morons. But folks who know something about geography would correctly identify Brasília as the capital.
*****11.
Most sequels fail to live up to the high standards set by the original*. But it's hard to believe that the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer could manage to suck so much more than its predecessor, in light of how low the original set the bar. Yet I Still Know What You Did Last Summer somehow manages this feat of qualitative limbo.
Okay, let's start with the obvious suckage here: The title of this movie is simply inaccurate. By the time the events take place, the summer in question is two summers ago. If the title were the worse thing about the movie, I'd be a happy viewer.
We start with the backbone of bad screenplays everywhere: the dream sequence! Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts, along with the rest of her, are in a church, confessing to the events of the first movie (while conveniently omitting certain details, like that whole "hiding the body" thing). Alas, the confessor turns out to Ben Willis, AKA the Gorton Fisherman! What an unexpected twist! Even more unexpectedly, the lead character does not, in fact, die in the first five minutes, instead waking up screaming for her life in the middle of class. Naturally, when a student screams like this, the teacher's reaction is to simply make a snotty remark, and the students all laugh at her instead of showing any concern.
Which, come to think of it, might be the only moment of realism in the movie.
Anyway, it turns out that there is one nice kid in the class, a boy named Will Benson. He follows Hewitt's breasts and offers what comfort he can, as we get the usual exposition about how spooked she is around the anniversary of the hit-and-run from two summers ago and the murders the next year. Then the horror begins -- Freddy Prinze, Jr. shows up! And he still can't act! He mopes a bit, and tries to convince Hewitt to come back to their small hick town. She demurs, because she's scheduled to get the bejeezus scared out of her by her moronic roommate in the next scene, and there's no time for a road trip.
Cue the next scene. In the dark house, Hewitt wakes to a noise. She turns on the lights, which promptly blow out. She then grabs the knife she keeps in the nightstand** and spends the next thirty minutes*** stalking the intruder through the house, only to find that the person she almost kills is her roommate, pop star, Scientologist, and drunk-driving murderess Brandy. Alas, Jennifer Love Hewitt does not stab Brandy to death. Instead, they go out clubbing, where they meet Brandy's boyfriend, Tyrell (played by Mekhi Phifer, who deserves better roles than this). When he offers to dance with Hewitt (at Brandy's request), she declines. At which point Brandy explains to him that, "no means yes."
Seriously.
She fucking tells him, "no means yes."
Have I mentioned that a running plotline involves Tyrell being horny, and Brandy not putting out?
I should jump ahead and note that Brandy lives through this movie. Which is too bad, as there's no character in this film I'd rather see get it more than her. And that includes Jack Black's worst roll ever, which I'll talk about in a bit.
Back to the story. Let's skip the rest of the club scene (only interesting because of a possible Gorton Fisherman sighting), and cut to the next morning, when the girls get a call from the local radio station, offering a prize if they know the capital of Brazil. They say, "Rio." And win the prize.
Yes. Really. Actually, let's skip ahead again. This was a rigged contest, of course. Because the real capital of Brazil, as any American high-school student could tell you, is really São Paulo****. But I do want to point it out now to note that, although the screenwriter of the movie is still a complete moron (for reasons that should already be clear, but which I'll discuss later), he does know the capital of Brazil.
Anyway, Brandy and Hewitt's breasts jump around excitedly because they've won a trip to some island they've never heard of. They bring Tyrell, and want to bring Prinze, but he's too busy moping. Instead, they drag along Will, who clearly has a crush on Hewitt's breasts.
Prinze and his friend Dave hit the road to try to visit Hewitt before she embarks (because of a moronic subplot in which Prinze decides that, even though he's been treating her like crap, he wants to marry Hewitt). Along the way, they find an abandoned car and a dead body. Prinze examines the body, only to realize that it's a dummy (or, as I like to say, "the screenwriter"). As Prinze turns around, he sees the Gorton Fisherman come out of nowhere and hook Dave through the head. The Fisherman then chases Prinze and runs him off the road.
Yes, the killer knew that Prinze would not go on the island, then decide to drive up to propose to Hewitt, then knew exactly where to wait on the hundreds of miles of road to trap him. There's not enough crack on this planet to make that seem believable.
Meanwhile, after some Wacky Travel Hijinks, the four travellers make it to the island, where they learn that this is the off-season, and they're the only guests around. The hotel is staffed by six future victims, whom we meet in rapid succession. There's a boathand who fakes a Jamaican accent, a creepy hotel owner played by Jeffrey Combs, a cute but bitchy bartender, a Voodoo-practicing bellhop, a cleaning lady, and Jack Black as the Dreadlocked Drug-dealing Poolboy. I know that this movie was made before High Fidelity, but I have to say that Black manages to lose the good will earned from that performance here.
After some Wacky Hotel Hijinks, we cut back to the mainland, where Prinze wakes up in the hospital. The cops don't believe his story, as Dave's body was nowhere to be found (and, once again, we have bodies killed without any blood spatter). So Prinze does what anyone would do: he leaves the hospital and pawns the engagement ring for $300 and a handgun.
Back on the island, the killer starts going to work. He kills the boathand on the dock, and then offs the cleaning lady when she discovers some bloody towels.
Hewitt takes a shower, and while she does so, the killer sneaks into the room and puts the body of the boathand into her closet, using the patented Horror Movie Cliche Trap that rigs a bloody body to fall from the ceiling just after the door of the closet opens. Naturally, Hewitt runs to the manager, but when they get back, there's no sign of the body or any blood. Since a real body would have left blood all over the place (not to mention a stench), the manager just accuses Hewitt of going insane. Tyrell accuses her of making it up as well, and we get more drawn-out and whacky shenanigans.
Fortunately, we soon get the death of Jack Black, which is a minor blessing.
The next day, after more of Tyrell acting like an asshole, the girls head to the island gym. Hewitt, doing the only logical thing someone who has survived multiple slasher attacks could do, gets into a tanning bed, puts on an eye shield, and dons headphones, thus completely isolating herself. Brandy goes to use the punching bag. As she's boxing away, she hears strange noises from a couple of rooms away. She goes to investigate, and finds that something in a gym dryer is banging around. She opens it, and finds that it wasn't a pair of sneakers, but the cleaning lady! Oh noes! She screams, but Hewitt, with the headphones, hears nothing. This means, of course, that she's completely unaware when the Fisherman comes in, ties the tanning bed down, and turns it up to the highest setting*****. By the time she figures out what's happening, the killer has left the room.
The two girls scream enough the get the attention of the boys, who run to their rescue. When the gang's back together, they head to the office of the manager, only to find that he's got a machete in his face, and thus can't talk right now. Worse, the only radio on the entire island has been destroyed. After hearing the recap of the first movie and learning about the Fisherman, Tyrell realizes that the killer must be the Voodoo Bellhop, because, well, why not? They set off to find him, and when they see the Voodoo stuff in his room, they realize that he must be the killer, indeed. Because, you know, those heathens are all serial killers.
At this point, the kids split up (smart!), and the power goes out (shock!). The girls find the Voodoo Bellhop, who notes that they got their trivia question wrong. He also somehow convinces them that he's not the killer, probably by not trying to kill them. He adds that he's seen the Gorton Fisherman around the island recently.
Back on the mainland, we see Prinze hijack a boat. Because he somehow knows that the killer is on the island, and that the contest was rigged, and that Hewett must still be alive after three days there.
On the island, we get backstory about Willis before he became the Fisherman. Turns out he used to live on the island, and one day he killed his wife and vanished with his two kids. So we've now seen the murderer retconned from someone out for revenge over his daughter into someone who was always a brutal killer. We also see, alongside the graves of Willis's wife and daughter, a new one for Hewitt. Oh noes! Fortunately, this leads to the showcase scene for Hewitt's breasts, as her now-soaking wet white shirt gets the brunt of the camera angles as she shouts to Ben Willis that he should just come and get her.
That doesn't happen, and while running around, Voodoo Bellhop and Will both vanish. The three survivors stumble upon the cute bartender (named Nancy), who'd gone into hiding, The four of them run around the hotel for a while, until they get to the kitchen, where the killer, lurking in the ventilation area waiting for just this moment, sticks his hook through Tyrell's neck. The three girls naturally decide to run upstairs and hide in the attic, always a better idea than, say, running outside. We get more Wacky Hijinks, this time in the form of collapsing floors and pot plants. This leads to a theoretically tense narrow escape, but no one actually dies. The make it to the safety of the hurricane shelter, only to find that this is where all the dead bodies have somehow ended up!
As they scream, Will shows up, drenched in blood. He says that he was attacked by Voodoo Bellhop, and that he saw the Fisherman wandering around. He also chucks the axe that the girls had scavenged aside. Hewitt starts to tend to his wounds as the other two girls run for a first aid kit. As Hewett examines him, she realizes that he's not actually wounded! Oh noes! What a trick! Will explains that none of the blood is his! That would make him *gasp* a killer!
Meanwhile, Nancy and Brandy are in the lobby, when Voodoo Bellhop shows up, with a tent pole stuck through him. He falls on Nancy, and the Fisherman promptly shows up and shoves the pole through her as well. He then chases after Brandy, while Will provides us with the "explanation" for what's happened.
See, Will Benson is actually Will, Ben's son. Clever, huh? His dad sent him to the same college as Hewitt and placed him in the same classes just to make sure that he was in the right place to be there to go on the trip. Naturally, they knew that Prinze would turn down the trip, and that Hewitt would ask Will instead. It's the most brilliant plan ever! Especially since Ben, who had never exactly been rich, had to spend tens of thousands of dollars setting it all up.
We now come to the climax, as Prinze tries to save Hewitt, but the gun jams. Will captures Prinze and holds him from behind, while Ben lunges with his hook. If you've ever seen even one professional wrestling match, you know what'll happen, as Prinze elbows his way out of the hold at the last second, and the hook gets buried in Prinze's torso. Ben has now killed two of his three known family members! Meanwhile, Hewitt has gotten ahold of the gun, and figured out how to make it work. She pumps Ben full of lead, and he falls into the grave he'd originally dug for Hewitt. Irony!
Brandy stumbles out of the hotel, somehow still alive against all audience hopes, and the heroes are rescued by the Coast Guard. We cut to sometime in the future, with Hewitt and Prinze cohabiting. After a bunch of false scares and a silly scene in which Prinze seems to get a little too much pleasure out of his electric toothbrush, Hewitt sits down on her bed, only to be grabbed by the hook and yanked under! Oh noes!
God, what a load of crap. The entire setup, backstory, and concept here is just plain ludicrous. Director Danny Cannon is one of the better directors on CSI, but he seems to have no feel for how to bring a movie together (his other notable film, Judge Dredd, is equally sloppy). And Trey Callaway turns in one of the worst scripts ever to get approved. That this is his only big-screen flick to date (he's mostly relegated to writing episodes of mediocre TV shows) is a minor blessing. There are more plotholes, dumb character decisions, and bad lines of dialogue here than any theatrical release deserves.
The cast, of course, doesn't do much to help. There are some talented folks here, but they don't have much to work with. And it's hard to believe that Jack Black and Jeffrey Combs are putting much effort into their horrible characters anyway. Phifer does a good job, but since his character is a complete asshole, it's hard to muster much sympathy for him. Brandy continues to show all the acting talent of a pop singer. And, as always, Hewitt is outperformed by her own pair of breasts, both of which clearly spent more time in acting school than she did.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is utter shite, not even coming close to the stunning mediocrity of its predecessor. With a script that couldn't have been written in more than a few days, direction that borders on the nonsensical, and a cast that's clearly in it to cash an easy paycheck, there's no reason to waste time on this film.
*Insert usual rant about Bride of Frankenstein, Godfather Part 2, Addams Family Values, and Empire Strikes Back.
**Deep down, I was expecting her to pull a vibrator from the nightstand instead.
***Okay, it's not a thirty-minute scene. But it feels like one.
****That's because American High school students are morons. But folks who know something about geography would correctly identify Brasília as the capital.
*****11.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 01:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 01:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 01:59 am (UTC)Good write-up, btw!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 02:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 04:17 am (UTC)Uh hello? Wrath of Khan?????
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 08:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-24 03:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-24 03:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-24 03:17 pm (UTC)