The murderous fisherman with a hook is back to once again stalk the two surviving teens, Julie and Ray, who had left him for dead, as well as cause even more murder and mayhem, this time at a posh island resort.
1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was far from a critical success, but it was a smash hit, raking in $125.3 million worldwide on a budget of $17 million. Naturally, with numbers like that, the filmmakers put a sequel on the fast track, and “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” was released exactly one year later. While IKWYDLS has been parodied over the years in films such as “Scary Movie” and “Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th,” its sequel is a parody of the first film, whether it knows it or not.
The old saying, lightning never strikes twice, isn’t always true, but it most certainly is here. Even though the movie had a competent cast and a young upcoming director, Danny Cannon, who directed the breakout hit “The Young Americans,” as well as Sylvester Stallone’s much-maligned “Judge Dredd,” it was made simply to cash in on the success of the original, which was no masterpiece but at least it kept a straight face as yet another clichéd slasher flick, filled with all the conventional horror tropes one would expect from a film of this ilk.
The movie takes place one year after Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and her boyfriend Ray’s (Freddie Prinze Jr.) two best friends, Helen and Barry (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe), were killed by Ben Willis, the fisherman they thought they accidentally killed a year prior in a drunken accident. While Julie and Ray have done their best to move on with their lives, Julie has moved to Boston to attend college. When her roommate Karla (Brandy) receives a phone call from a local radio station informing her that she won a weekend vacation for four to the Bahamas, both girls are ecstatic, with Karla inviting her boyfriend Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer) and Julie inviting Ray.
Ray declines, and Karla invites a classmate she knows likes Julie, Will (Matthew Settle), and the four head off for their weekend getaway. They arrive on the tiny island of Tower Bay and check into their hotel. Much to their surprise, they are the only guests on the island, and not long after they arrive, Julie begins to experience strange goings-on. Her friends know about her past, and she fears Ben Willis has returned, but they don’t believe her. Not until the dead bodies of hotel workers begin piling up. As a storm moves in and knocks the island’s power out, the four friends band together in a battle of wits against a seemingly unstoppable killer.
The story’s locale, that of a tiny island, is the perfect spot for a horror film; it’s just a pity the screenplay, filled with bargain-basement dialogue, overdramatic performances, and straight-up nonsensical twists, made sure this franchise was brought to a standstill before it had a chance to soar. And that’s a good thing because this unnecessary sequel was one film too many. Even though there was a third film in the series, titled “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer,” a standalone movie that tried to revitalize the franchise, it failed.
As bad as this movie is, Jennifer Love Hewitt gives it her all, and she has one robust set of lungs as she spends most of the film’s 100-minute runtime screaming her head off. The rest of the cast is mediocre at best and could have been played by anybody. Even when it looks like the film is over, with a sense of finality attached, the filmmakers have to prove us wrong by including another jump scare that was undoubtedly added to lead into the next feature. Thankfully, that never transpired. And keep an eye out for Jack Black’s uncredited outrageous Jamaican stoner, the only HIGHlight of the movie.
Available on 4K Ultra HD™ for its 25th Anniversary
