Directed by Jim Gillespie
Running Time: 1:40
Let me first say, I love horror films. Give me A Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween anytime, and I'll be happy. In recent memory, horror films have become too stupid for words. Cheesy special effects, lame killers, that sort of thing. Then Scream came out, and things started to look up. So, cashing in on the popularity of Scream and its screenwriter, Kevin Williamson, they decided to make I Know What You Did Last Summer. It had an interesting plot, 4 best friends (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe) accidently run over a man on a deserted road. Afraid of what might happen to them if they go to the police, they dump the (dead?) body into the ocean and walk away as if nothing happened. A year later all of their lives have been turned upside down. No one is happy, no one is doing what they want to do. One of the girls gets a note when she arrives home from college. Someone out there knows what they did last summer, and isn't going to let them forget it. So the plot of the movie sounded interesting. I wanted to see how it played out, and I suppose as far as horror plots go, this one turned out ok. But the way they went about it just didn't seem scary. Too many cliches, ominous music playing, the requisite scary story to open up the movie, that sort of thing. The best thing about Scream was that it didn't take itself too seriously. The movie knew that the audience had seen horror films before and they made it so you became a part of the film, guessing along with you who the killer was. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, everything seemed too planned out. And the scary scenes were few and far between. I think the scariest scene was the very last one. As I told a friend of mine, if it wasn't for the two women in the film, (Gellar and Hewitt) I probably wouldn't have liked the movie at all. But they play their parts well, and for what it's worth, they scream better than the girls in Scream. And on an attractiveness level, they were definitely more beautiful than the Scream girls. If you're hard up for a horror film, go out and see this movie. Or wait around for Scream 2 coming to a theater near you on December 12th.
