I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Review
by Bill Chambers (wchamber AT netcom DOT ca)November 15th, 1998
I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER *1/2 (out of four)
-a review by Bill Chambers ([email protected])
(Enter the I REALLY DO STILL POSITIVELY KNOW WHAT YOU DID TWO SUMMERS BEFORE LAST SUMMER contest at Film Freak Central!
http://www.geocities.com/~billchambers
Mind the furniture!)
starring Jennifer Love-Hewitt, Brandy Norwood, Mekhi Pfeiffer, Freddie Prinze, Jr.
screenplay by Trey Callaway
directed by Danny Cannon
It seems like I’m reviewing cheeseball horror movies on a monthly basis now. Scream revitalized a genre the studios are now intent on burying into the ground again—the serial killers in these new slasher movies have nothing on Sony and Miramax in the "relentless" department. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is a terrible film in many respects, but in the wake of the stupefyingly bad Urban Legend, it’s Citizen Hook.
Jennifer Love-Hewitt reprises her role as buxom teenager Julie James—who apparently escaped certain doom at the end of the last movie by...waking up. She lives in fear of Ben Willis, the vengeful fisherman-victim of a hit and run by Julie and her pals. Paranoid and beat, she accepts a free trip to the Bahamas from her friend Karla (Norwood), winner of the local radio station’s 4th of July getaway giveaway. Bikini-ready Julie invites boyfriend Ray (Prinze, Jr.), who—and here’s the movie’s biggest mystery—TURNS HER DOWN, but changes his mind and plans to surprise her before take-off. Until he gets a roadside visit from Captain Hell-liner himself, that is. Unaware of this and feeling shunned, Julie goes on vacation, anyway, with Karla, Karla’s boyfriend (Pfeiffer), and Will (Matthew Settle), a real boy-next-door type who’s sweet on Julie.
To make a long story short—I can’t believe it took a paragraph to describe the set-up for this gratuitous sequel—the trip is a disaster. Not only is it storm season, not only is the desk clerk (The Frighteners’ Jeffrey Combs) a jerk, not only are the few island residents and our heroic vacationers getting picked off by the resourceful Willis one-by-one, but the Karaoke machine isn’t working properly! (You think killing is hard? Try reprogramming a LaserDisc so that Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive" now contains the lyric "I still know what you did last summer!") All is not lost—Ray is on his way to save the day, and a helpful witch doctor is saying little prayers for Julie and co.
This picture is really about breasts: two of them. Julie, like a good horror heroine, never does up her shirt to the collar, always wears white in the rain, and keeps sexy underwear on in case of a sudden desire to tan. Based on the hormonal charge I got out of the movie, I can’t imagine what it was doing to the ten year old boy who sat next to me—he gets Jennifer Love-Hewitt, and my generation got Heather Langenkamp! Lucky bastard.
I didn’t like I Know What You Did Last Summer and I can’t say I liked this continuation any more or less. The pacing in both films is languid—how is it that so much time passes with neither murder nor character development? I Still Know What You Did Last Summer has a better sense of humour than the first one, though, and at least it explains away Willis’s random selection of victims. (I don’t think the hotel maid or the stoner dude had the slightest idea what Julie did last summer.) Director Cannon (Judge Dredd) is a competent filmmaker but not a particularly imaginative one—if there is a part three (what on Earth would they call it?), and the fun denouement suggests there will be, here’s my suggestion: hire a filmmaker with flair, someone who can really energize this stillborn series—someone who won’t rely on so many shock notes. And let that person run wild with the camera. (Aside: if Blandy [sic] must appear in the next one, try to keep the number of times she says "baby" to a minimum. Thanks in advance.)
-November, 1998
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