Apr
13
An analysis of the “Scream” series would be incomplete if I left out its first imitator, the Jim Gillespie-directed, Kevin Williamson-scripted “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Released less than a year after “Scream,” it capitalized on the renewed audience interest in dead teenager movies and was successful enough to warrant a theatrically-released (and clumsily-titled sequel), “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” in 1998 as well as a long-delayed DTV installment, “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer” in 2006.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which I will henceforth refer to as IKWYDLS because the title is so bloody unwieldy, feels like a step back from “Scream.” Neither as witty as “Scream” nor as thrilling, it’s not another game-changing send-up but rather a straightforward slasher. I remember feeling a little let down by the film the first time I saw it in college. I honestly expected “Scream 1.5,” something to tide me over until the official “Scream” sequel opened two months later.
Revisiting the film after having not seen it in at least ten years, I found it to be pleasantly diverting. It’s a darker movie than “Scream,” the characters less sympathetic and for the most part deserving of their gruesome fates. I’ll do a deeper analysis in a moment. First, an overview…
Body Count: Five (confirmed). If you count deaths that are faked, then seven.
Best Kill: Max (Johnny Galecki) gets a hook through the chin by our rain-slickered slasher.
Best Exchange: Trying to play it cool after having (almost) committed vehicular manslaughter, Ray (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) asks Max, who just so happens to be motoring by, “What can I do for you, Max?” to which Max spits back, “You can wipe that my-shit-don’t-stink grin off your face.”
Most WTF Line: Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) attempts to convince a sheriff’s deputy that her ex-boyfriend’s been killed with this bon mot: “Listen, you little shit-stick-Mayberry-ass reject. There’s been a murder, and you are going to fry in hell if you ignore it!”
Most Surprising Extended Cameo: One-time omnipresent ’90s character actress Anne Heche plays Missy Egan, the creepy, grieving sister of the guy the heroes think they killed accidentally-on-purpose.
Best Scare: The mirror gag at the very end.
Hilarious Anachronism: Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) aspires to star on the soap opera “Guiding Light,” a show that every homemaker knows went off the air in 2009; I had to Google that to confirm.
Does a black character comment on a white character’s whiteness, apropos of nothing? Why, yes. Twice.
Is Jennifer Love Hewitt the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen? A-yup.
IKWYDLS is about four dumb teenagers — Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), her boyfriend Ray, her BFF Helen and her BFF’s insufferable toolbag of a sex partner, Barry (Ryan Phillippe) — who party it up at Dawson’s Beach on the 4th of July. They seemingly have their whole lives ahead of them. Helen’s just been crowned the Croaker Queen (talk about damning someone with faint praise); Julie and Ray hook up for the very first time; and Barry gets tanked because of course he does. Teetotaler Ray insists on driving them back home along a windy ribbon of road. Barry’s reluctant to give up the keys to his prized BMW, but Ray persists. And as Ray navigates the hairpin turns, Barry opens the sunroof and howls at the moon like a drunken werewolf. Then he dumps a bottle of booze in Ray’s lap, distracting him, and Ray immediately plows right into some guy who’s inexplicably in the middle of the road. Derp!
Very quickly, the kids determine that the four of them will get the gas chamber for committing vehicular manslaughter (I’m paraphrasing), and the only way they can erase this unfortunate little incident is to dump the body in the ocean. The criminal justice system is far more lenient on individuals who go to great lengths to dispose of people they accidentally kill rather than simply owning up to it, amirite? At any rate, as they try to chuck the guy off a pier, he turns out to be not so dead after all and grabs Helen’s precious Croaker Queen crown before disappearing into the briny depths. Barry dives in after him, retrieves Helen’s tiara and leaves the guy at the bottom of the ocean. Satisfied with how neatly they’ve covered up their crime, the heroes go their separate ways.
One year later, Julie returns home after her rough freshman year at college. She looks like death warmed over. But, since she’s Jennifer Love Hewitt, death warmed over never looked so good. Her mother is concerned, but Julie made a pact with her friends not to tell anyone about the guy they killed and tossed in the ocean, not even parents. Most people’s folks would freak out about something like that. And so, she remains evasive. Then she gets an anonymous letter, a letter that reads, “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Talk about a slasher who’s a bit of a procrastinator. It took this guy a whole friggin’ year to hatch a revenge plot!
Now, Julie must, with the help of her former friends, try to uncover the identity of the the person is tormenting them. Is it Max, who rolled by shortly after the accident and has always had his eye on Julie? Or maybe it’s Elsa (Bridgette Wilson), Helen’s embittered older sister? But what if…what if it’s actually Ray, Julie’s lovesick ex-boyfriend? Whoever it is, the killer trudges around in a fisherman’s slicker and wields a nasty-looking hook.
Unfortunately, the central mystery of the film is resolved in a way that’s kind of a cop-out. (*Spoiler*) I typically hate when the killer isn’t any of the red herrings but someone whose unmasking is only surprising by virtue of the fact that it’s a payoff that has virtually no setup. That being said, Muse Watson’s killer fisherman character, Ben Willis, sort of looks like Ernest P. Worrell’s evil twin. So he’s got that going for him. (*End Spoiler*)
How does IKWYDLS hold up? Though it’s not a worthy successor to “Scream,” it’s an effective slasher movie in its own right. One thing that’s interesting about it is that the heroes aren’t entirely sympathetic. They make a really stupid mistake that causes their lives to unravel. But the script shifts gears and becomes a detective story without spending much time on the characters’ remorse over what they’ve done. It’s just not that kind of a movie. I like how they at least dealt with Julie’s guilty conscience for a couple of scenes. At the end of the day, it’s a dead teenager movie, not a redemption story. And as a dead teenager movie, it works well enough.
-Brad Lohan
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Ernest P. Worrell? LMFHO!!!!! i know he had a rare watch collection that was reportedly priceless…. which probably means he would have taken less than a year to start killing…. if HE had written the damn thing. LOL