Four young friends bound by a tragic accident are reunited when they find themselves being stalked by a hook-wielding maniac in their small seaside town.
Horror films were my thing growing up in the ’70s and the ’80s. The list is too long to mention some of the absolute classics both decades gave to the world, but I feel the ’90s get a bad rap with their ten years of horror, although in that decade, we were given classics such as “Scream,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” and “Event Horizon,” to mention a few. Kevin Williamson helped redefine the genre with his breakout script for “Scream,” which would eventually be directed by horror maestro Wes Craven in 1996. After the success of “Scream,” Williamson was in high demand and created the TV show “Dawson’s Creek,” and in 1997, wrote the teenage horror, “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and while the critics savaged it, it would earn $126 million worldwide, with a sequel fast-tracked into production.
The story centers on four friends; Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), her boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.), and Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her boyfriend Barry (Ryan Phillipp). They all live in the sleepy seaside town of Southport, North Carolina, and on their way home from a 4th of July celebration one evening, they accidentally hit a man in the middle of the road and are convinced he is dead. Instead of going to the police, afraid they will all go to prison, the four friends decide to dump the body in the bay, allowing nature to take care of the corpse, and vow never to speak of the evening again.
Exactly one year later, Julie receives a letter with a piece of paper that reads, “I know what you did last summer.” Terrified, she approaches the others and shows them the letter, and they all dismiss it as a sick joke, but when they each have near-death experiences at the hands of an unseen antagonist, they are convinced the man they dumped in the bay has come back for revenge. Unable to go to the police or anybody else because of the absurdity of their story, they quickly realize they are on their own and must band together to try to stop the tormenter before he kills them.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” has been parodied to death (pun intended), especially in the hilarious “Scary Movie,” but, believe it or not, I never actually saw the movie until I sat down to review it. Honestly, it always looked ridiculous, but it played out much better than I had expected. The young cast does well with their limited dialogue and emotional depth, or lack thereof, but Jim Gillespie, who directed the criminally underrated Sylvester Stallone thriller “Eye See You” five years later, has a firm grasp of the horror genre and hits all the right notes and gives the audience exactly what they want, and expect. Composer John Debney delivers a taut, pulse-pounding score that resonates throughout, his musical cues cautioning us that something is about to jump out of the dark and scare us.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” is instantly enjoyable but utterly forgettable. It’s not a bad film, but one that, after the final credits have begun to roll, you wonder what you will have for dinner. Now that I’ve finally seen the movie, my next step is to watch “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” and while I know part two flopped, I will get to form my own critique and not be led by the critics who bashed it upon its initial release. This is one critic who knows what he likes. And that is horror. Wish me luck!
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