I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Film: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Stars: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Geller, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Johnny Galecki

Director: Jim Gillespie

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

As we wind down the month, we are weirdly going to the first of the 15 movies that I saw for this year's marathon (I watch them out-of-order...I am not a rich man so half of these screenings were the result of checking them out from the library cause that's free-support libraries!).  I Know What You Did Last Summer came in the wake of the Scream phenomenon and was a blockbuster on its own (they share the same screenwriter), making over $125 million worldwide, and spawning its own franchise (how this hasn't gotten a legacy sequel yet is beyond me).  The movie, though, isn't as well-regarded as the Scream movies, and I was curious why, because as a tween at the time observing this from afar (I was too young to get to watch R-rated horror movies), the two titles became synonymous in my head.  After watching them, though, I found that while Scream changed the game for horror, this movie merely continued a long-standing tradition of beautiful young people caught in a dangerous situation.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on a group of four friends right before graduating high school: Ray (Prinze), his girlfriend Julie (Hewitt), her best friend Helen (Geller), and her boyfriend Barry (Phillippe).  They are out joyriding, and in Julie & Ray's case, losing their virginity, and then during a drunken accident, they run over a man, whom they decide (after warding off Johnny Galecki's nerdy Max) that they need to dispose of his body in the ocean, so they can get away with the crime as they're certain they'll be charged with manslaughter.  Of course, like all good horror movies will tell you, it turns out he's still alive, and comes back a year later to start terrorizing the teens, whose lives have been upended in the wake of the tragedy (Helen gave up her acting dreams, Ray is a fisherman, Julie stopped using conditioner & yes that's literally commented on).  One-by-one, they start to die, until they finally face off against the man they thought they killed...once again throwing him in the ocean without any evidence that he is actually dead this time (he's not-there's a sequel).

As I mentioned above, Kevin Williamson wrote this in addition to Scream, but while this came out as a result of Scream, it was actually written before it.  Williamson had shopped the script all-over-town to no avail, but when his Scream script was a success, Columbia jumped at an easy cash grab & bought it. There was probably a reason that the script wasn't bought while Scream was-it's not very good.  Very loosely based on the mystery novel by Lois Duncan, it doesn't have the same sort of pop culture heartbeat that Scream does, and it honestly doesn't really present a strong mystery.  The backstory of Ben Willis (the man-with-a-hook whom they run over, and eventually start terrorizing) feels convoluted & not fun.  Scream was a blast not just because it was funny and upended the horror genre, but also because it's a good mystery.  In order to have a good mystery, one of the characters you already know need to be the killer, not some maskless man in the background with no real connection to the main characters.  Ray, as presented in the film, should be the killer, but instead he becomes a hero despite being absent for large swaths of the picture, serving instead as a red herring.

Still, there are fun aspects of this.  Teenage John was obsessed with Freddie Prinze, Jr. & Ryan Phillippe, both insanely sexy as the two men in this (to be fair, Hewitt, Geller, & Galecki all look good too-this is a very hot cast), and had I seen this as a teenager, the scene where Phillippe runs around in a towel might have broken my VCR.  Also, Sarah Michelle Geller steals every scene she's in as Helen Shivers.  Geller is operating on a different level here, fleshing out a character that is usually just a stereotype (the beautiful, bitchy prom queen trope that dies in the second act after not having grown at all).  You genuinely want her to live, and her death is actually a huge bummer because she's earned Final Girl status more than Julie by the end of the movie, even though smart, brainy (and brunette) Jennifer Love Hewitt's character fits more into the Laurie Strode cliche.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, Scream