Review of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) by Darik H — 16 Jul 2012

If Scream was screenwriter Kevin Williamson's postmodern deconstruction of the slasher horror genre, then I Know What You Did Last Summer was his attempt to mimic the kind of films Scream was deconstructing. It's like a cheesy eighties slasher film transplanted whole into the nineties... warts and all.

Following the release of Scream in 1996, studios were buzzing about teen slasher films again; just like what had happened after the release of Halloween in the seventies, they immediately got to work greenlighting anything that could capitalize on the film's success. A glut of "witty" teen slasher flicks followed-- Valentine's Day, Urban Legend, and even Halloween H20-- but the first one out of the gate was I Know What You Did Last Summer, a film loosely based on a young adult suspense novel from the seventies and written by Kevin Williamson himself. Of all the Scream cash-ins, it was probably the most successful, making $125 million at the box office... but ironically, I Know What You Did Last Summer (jeez, that's a long title) was probably the least Scream-like film of any of the new wave of imitators. Sure, it had a cast of hot young T.V. actors filling up its ranks, and it was built around a mystery killer plot... but it wasn't meta, or self-aware like Scream... it wasn't clever, funny, or intelligent like Scream... and its "mystery killer" plot was incidental-- a product of a conspiracy story set-up more akin to Prom Night or House on Sorority Row than anything in a Scream film. No, I Know What You Did Last Summer was the kind of film that Scream spent ninety minutes poking holes into: its got vacuous teenage characters who fall into easy stereotypes, a preposterous hit-and-run cover-up storyline that would only sound like a good idea to the kind of morons who populate horror movies, a lazily conceived serial killer whose identity proves to be the biggest "WTF?" moment in the film, and a cheap-scare ending obviously intended to set up a sequel. It's even set on a holiday. Without a doubt, this is Kevin Williamson's homage to the crappier slasher films of the eighties... so the only question is, did he write it as a subversive in-joke, or as a cynical cash-in?

The film starts on July 4th, as some guy sits on the edge of a cliff bordered by a deserted highway and stares out into the ocean, clearly distraught. Cut to our heroes, a group of four high schoolers setting off for college in the fall, who head out to the beach for a little while before heading back along that same highway from the beginning (uh-oh...). Sure enough, they accidentally hit someone as he's crossing the road, and, convinced that their lives would be effectively over if they went to the proper authorities, they decide to dump the body in the ocean (without being absolutely certain that he is dead, of course) and to form a pact, swearing never to speak of the incident again. One year later, Julie, the sensitive one who wanted to go to the cops, returns home from college, only to find a note waiting for her that simply reads "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER". Freaked, she goes to visit with the others that were there that night: Helen, the beauty queen who ended up working in her family's shop; Barry, the douchey rich kid who goes ballistic every time the subject of "manslaughter" comes up; and Ray, the nice guy from a poor family whom Julie broke up with after the accident. Together, they start to investigate the guy that they ran over-- a young man named David Egan-- and try to piece together who could have seen them run him over that night. Before long, though, the messages become more frequent and more intense, people start going missing, and our heroes find themselves stalked by a man in a rain slicker carrying a gnarly-looking hook... until finally, on July 4th, the sh*t finally hits the fan, and the killer comes for them all, one by one...

The cast for this movie reads like a joke. Playing the lead role of Julie James-- the sensitive one, remember?-- is Jennifer Love Hewitt, who, despite being racked with guilt about having taken a man's life, apparently still feels confident enough to parade around for half the movie in low-cut tops (that have a strange tendency to be photographed at high angles, I noticed). Then there's her boyfriend, Ray Bronson, played by Freddie Prinze Jr. (of course) (more to come).