I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Director: Danny Cannon Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Brandy Norwood, Mekhi Phifer, Matthew Settle, Freddie Prinze Jr. Screenplay: Trey Callaway, Stephen Gaghan Producers: William S. Beasley, Stokely Chaffin, Erik Feig, Neal H. Moritz Runtime: US Distribution: Columbia Rated R: violence, language
By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
A film with a title as long and clunky as I Know What You Did Last Summer poses a problem for film makers: what should be done in the case of a sequel? Well, it wouldn't suffice to shorten it to something like I Know 2 or Summer 2; so, the makers of this particular sequel came up with the even-longer I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The only problem with this title is that the "summer" in question was two summers ago in the context of this film. A more appropriate title would have been I'm Still Aware of What you Did Two Summers Ago, or You Know What You Did Two Summers Ago? Well, I Still Know. If they make a third film in the series, we might have something like Remember Me? I'm The Guy Who Knows What You Do in the Summer, and I'm Back for More!
And yet, something tells me that more time was spent naming this film than actually thinking about it, for I Still Know... is a film so painfully awful and pointless that it makes me realize just how vapid the horror-film genre can be. I've written a lot about violence pornography lately, but no film illustrates my point better than this one: this film is banking on its excessive and exploitative use of violence and gore. The picture fails on a fundamental level: I can appreciate successful pornography to a degree, but I Still Know... is not scary. It's not disturbing. It's a stupid and hateful chunk of hackwork without a glimpse of intelligence or worth. And, to top it all off, it features every cliche known to the genre:
1. The heroine survivor of the first film, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), is having nightmares about her horrible experience. In response to this, she never hesitates to investigate strange noises in the dark while holding a sharp knife. The strange noises usually turn out to be Karla (Brandy), who is too-cool-for-words.
2. Since the film can't take place in a setting similar to the first film, the girls conveniently win a vacation to go to the Bahamas. They win by incorrectly guessing the capital of Brazil (they say Rio, when, in fact, it is Brasilia...but this has a point later!). Even though Julie really misses her boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), the two girls bring along Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer) and Will (Matthew Settle) for sexual reasons.
3. Well, when they arrive at the Bahamas, there are some convenient discoveries: it's storm season, and there won't be any boats going to or from the island. Also, there are no guests because it's storm season. The only people present are a few employees of the hotel. Since police officers are useless in horror films anyway, it's no big deal that the hotel has no security guard or anything like that.
4. People start dying. The Bad Dude in a Slicker with a Hook goes around sticking his weapon in people's mouths and hands, and plunges giant sharp objects into people who pose no threat whatsoever. Later on, the killer's identity is discovered and everyone who had more than three lines survives. But this isn't before a profoundly dumb series of plot devices is employed to land our heroes in a final confrontation in a tropical rainforest.
>From a screenwriting standpoint, I have trouble believing that someone over the age of ten composed this script. To call it amateurish is pretty kind; I'm more inclined to believe that a middle-school horror-flick freak wrote it as a joke for his friends. I mean, come on, I've seen horror films that aren't entirely original, but I Still Know... is pathetic. The Bad Dude in a Slicker with a Hook, like Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers, is really good at killing people violently, never being seen, and instantly cleaning up his mess so the person who saw the dead body looks crazy to all her friends. In addition, he has immense strength, and can lift hundreds of pounds with one arm.
The acting is very bad. I love to look at Jennifer Love Hewitt, but she just isn't any good in this movie. She's at her best when she's being nice, but the rage part of this (shouting "Come and get me! I'm right here!" in the rain) doesn't quite work. Brandy is spunky and all that, but really just annoying. Settle and Prinze, Jr. do what they can with non-characters, but Phifer is the absolute worst, mixing dreadful overacting with his dreadful dialogue. There aren't any characters anyway, so caring about any of these people is not an option.
But let's talk about the violence. The movie was incompetently directed by Danny Cannon; even a lousy script can be turned into something slightly interesting and suspenseful by a good director, but Cannon seems to think that huge bursts of music are scary. He seems to believe that people walking down dark hallways is frightening. He obviously thinks that teenagers want to see buckets of blood, because that's the only thing you can count on getting out of I Still Know... But, unfortunately, Cannon just wants to exploit the violence. We don't care about characters who are introduced and killed in the same scene -- it's nothing but gratuitous crap. The scariest movies I've seen leave everything up to the imagination: Seven and The Shining qualify as truly frightening films, because they have a level of humanity that the typical teen-slasher ignores completely.
It upsets me to know that teenagers live and die for this kind of thing, and that Hollywood is happy to provide it for them. I Still Know... is as bad as they come -- it makes me realize the good things about a moderately stylistic film like Urban Legend, and the interesting character aspects of H20. While watching people get stabbed and diced to bits for no other reason than to please popcorn munchers, I got a sick feeling in my stomach. No thought was put in to this movie -- it exploits mindless violence for the purpose of making money.
This is not a moral issue; I can live with a film that just wants to entertain, as long as it at least tries to be art in even the vaguest way. I Still Know..., like too many movies, has been made for the sole purpose of making money. It's rare that a film so bad is also so inherently offensive. Violence can be art, but not like this. Violence can even be funny if its done in the right way. I'm not saying that I expected this film to be smart or satirical, but I at least expected it to do its job. It makes me wish that a thoughtful script were more important than a lot of dead bodies. The fact that it's not worries me.
>From 0-10: 1
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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