I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Julie James is home for the summer. Looking pale and withdrawn, her mother suspects the worst -- she's on drugs. Actually, that isn't even close to the worst. The reality is much more horrific.
It was the previous summer that her troubles begin. Julie, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, spent the last Independence Day at the beach on a double date. Hers is the only performance in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER with any depth.
Around the campfire that ill-fated night with Julie were her boyfriend and soon to be fisherman Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), her girlfriend and just crowned beauty queen Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Helen's boyfriend and cocky jock Barry Cox (Ryan Philippe). In a scene lifted straight out of SCREAM -- they share the same screenwriter, Kevin Williamson -- the kids try to out-scare each other with diabolical stories. To their credit, their story telling has more intensity that the movie itself. It is in this sequence that the four actors come most alive. In the rest of the film their parts are relegated to caricature.
With Barry soused, Ray drives his car back that fatal night. On the road, they run over someone and then have the bad sense to push his not quite dead body into the ocean. Max (Johnny Galecki), whom they had snubbed earlier, drives by soon after the accident and may or may not have seen anything.
The show then advances to the following summer, when someone dressed in a fisherman's slicker begins sending the four teenagers "I Know What You Did Last Summer" notes and begins injuring and killing people.
The story alternates between a traditional slasher film and a whodunit. The suspects include one of the teenagers themselves, their friends, and Max as well as a creepy Anne Heche as the victim's sister. Any of them, or someone out of the blue, could be the murderer.
John Debney's heavy music overwhelms every scene with reminders to be frightened. The writer, seeming to lack confidence in his material, prefaces every attack by the mysterious mad slicker with ample notification of his arrival on the scene. A few more surprises would have been welcome in this putative horror show.
The very last scene of the film, although the most predictable, manages to be the scariest. The only other frightening sequence in the story involves a person tapping on a car window and thereby startling the car's occupants and the audience. Although a handsome film, thanks to Denis Crossan's cinematography, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is a goose-bumps-free horror show with little fresh material and nothing to recommend its viewing.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER runs 1:40. It is rated R for profanity and gory violence including people being gutted with a hook. The show would be fine for teenagers used to such horror pictures. I give this one thumbs down and * 1/2.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: October 15, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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