I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (Columbia) Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Ryan Phillippe, Johnny Galecki, Anne Heche. Screenplay: Kevin Williamson, based on the novel by Lois Duncan. Producers: Neal H. Moritz, Erik Feig, Stokely Chaffin. Director: Jim Gillespie. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Screenwriter Kevin Williamson helped make Dimension Films a mint on last year's smash hit SCREAM by demonstrating that he understood the "rules" of horror film plots. You know the ones: never have pre-marital sex, never say "I'll be right back," never let the killer chase you up the stairs. Williamson's self-aware slasher film tickled the funny bones of genre buffs, but SCREAM didn't work only as a satire. It was an effective horror film in its own right because director Wes Craven understood that, even more important than the rules for being a character in a horror film, you've got to know the rules for _making_ a horror film.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER was also penned by Williamson (from a popular novel by Lois Duncan), but its success is more scattershot than SCREAM's. At times, it's a potent and effective chiller; at other times, it's fairly uninspired. In short, someone wasn't always following the rules. When the rules are firmly in place, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID stays mostly on track. To wit:
1) ESTABLISH A FUNDAMENTALLY SOUND PREMISE. Unlike most horror films, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID doesn't just send a psycho on a random killing spree. His targets are very specific: four teenagers (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe) involved in a July 4th hit-and-run accident who try to hide their crime, then discover a year later that, well, someone knows what they did last summer. That set-up requires a bit of mystery and a bit of creativity, and Williamson does a decent job of providing them. Which doesn't mean that he should have made the film a mystery, because...
2) WHODUNNIT DON'T MATTER. A horror film is under no obligation to tease the audience as to the killer's identity; Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers did plenty of damage with the audience on a first-name basis. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID goes to great lengths to make that question important -- all the characters are preoccupied with it, suspects pop up at regular intervals, and the finale seems built around an eventual unmasking, all of which makes it perplexing that the script never gives you a chance to guess who the killer is. It's also disappointing to find the menacing slicker-clad maniac -- you may never trust the Gorton's fisherman in the same way again -- turn into just some person with a grudge and an ice hook for the final reel. Williamson could have done better than a Scooby-Doo resolution to a scary film. Which points why it's important to...
3) FIND A TONE AND GO WITH IT. Much of the exposition in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID -- and there's a bit too much of it -- frames the story as a psychological mystery, with plenty of guilty confessions and attempts to investigate who wants to do in our protagonists. Then, a few minutes will pass and someone will end up with an ice hook inconveniently lodged in his or her carotid artery. Williamson and Gillespie often seem to be scrambling for an R rating, when they could have made just as effective a film with a PG-13. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID didn't have to be a horror film to be scary, as long as the makers understood rule #4...
4) THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SHOCK AND A SCARE. Any hack with a mixing board can freak out an audience with a burst of loud music. It takes considerably more style to build up an audience for a scare, then scare them anyway. Director Jim Gillespie stages a few exceptionally creepy set pieces, building suspense which lasts a lot longer than the two seconds it takes for someone to leap into frame. One ten-minute sequence in particular, in which Gellar tries to escape her assailant, is an exhausting (if somewhat anti-climactic) ride. And speaking of anti-climaxes...
5) TRY TO FINISH WITH YOUR BEST STUFF. The ship-board finale is a solid piece of film-making, but the unmasked villain doesn't quite cut an imposing figure. Once again I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER appears to suffer from an identity crisis; much of the last reel could have come from any of a dozen crime thrillers. Perhaps that's why Gillespie and Williamson have so much trouble following the rules of horror film-making. It's only every so often that they seem convinced they're actually making a horror film.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 "rules" girls: 5.
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