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I Know What You Did Last Summer is an obvious attempt to cash in on the big success of the Scream movies. Compared to them and many of the other horror classics (Halloween most notably), this movie just does not measure up, but it is still entertaining. There is a sense of mystery here that really hasn't existed in slasher movies since the first Nightmare on Elm Street. You don't know who the killer is and he's always hiding in the shadows until... you know. This movie is far from perfect but entertaining.

I like Kevin Williamson. Scream was a brilliant parody of horror films while being scary in its own right and Dawson's Creek is a great television show. But this film is just not that good. It's not scary. It's not well written or well thought out. There really was no reason for guy from Rosanne to get killed. He had nothing to do with it. And it is the same thing in the sequel, most of the cast has nothing to do with it either. I didn't find this flick scary in the least although the story at the beginning was interesting. It is blessed with a cast of incredibly good looking people but that does not make it a good film to watch. If you really enjoy seeing Love Hewitt running around with her breasts half exposed, Gellar looking particularly sexy, Phillipe trying to box, Prinze Jr. looking silly, stupid characters that do stupid things, unconvincing deaths, a trunk full of fish that conveniently disappears (smell and all) when it is required to, someone get a hair cut in their sleep without knowing it and a plethora of other really bad scenarios, then this is your movie. However, if you want to see a good horror flick with teenagers getting killed, rent the early Fridays, the first Halloween, the first Nightmare, the first Texas, the first Evil Dead and even Scream. But for God sake, stay away from this one. It is quite bad.

In the late 90's, there had seemed to be a trend of the Dawson's Creek meets Halloween slasher flicks, some had big hits like Scream, and some kinda missed like Urban Legend, then right in between came I Know What You Did Last Summer based off the book of the same name and I do mean just based on the book because the book and the movie are two entirely different tales. The book was more of a moral story while this was just a plain slasher teen flick, but over all I would say that I Know What You Did Last Summer was a decent horror flick. It starred the biggest stars of it's time: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Ryan Phillipe, and surprisingly they clicked pretty well, but I think that's because they just all have to play pretty white kids with problems, lol. But it's all good, this was a fun little horror flick.

Four high school friends have graduated and are celebrating the fourth of July. They all have big plans: Julie is planning to go to Harvard, Helen is going to New York to become an actress, Ray is staying in town to help with the business of fishing, and Barry has a wrestling scholarship. They all are just having a big party and while driving home they accidentally hit a man, killing him. Freaked out and scarred for what might happen since alcohol is involved, they dump the body in the river hoping that it'll go away. But a year later when the friends re-unite, they are receiving letters claiming that someone knows what they did. Barry is then hit by a car, Helen's hair is chopped off, and Julie gets bodies put into her car trunk; they all must face the fisherman who is after them with a big hook and it seems like he does not want these kids to live.

I Know What You Did Last Summer has typical Dawson's Creek drama, but it's all good, I mean it was written by Kevin Williamson who wrote the series. But the cast did click very well and as cliché'd as the movie was, it's still good for a scare. Sarah does have one of the best damsel in distress chase scenes ever, that was pretty intense I have to admit. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a fun flick I would recommend to watch at midnight in the dark, you're gonna get jumpy a few times.

7/10

I haven't seen a whole lot of teen slasher movies. In fact this may be the only one I have seen, and it is a fitting tribute of the genre for our birthday girl, Sarah Michelle Geller.

Writer Kevin Williamson follows up Scream with a serious example of just how effective these movies can be if they're well-written, directed and acted.

Sarah Michelle Geller (Buffy, TMNT) and Jenniver Love Hewitt (Ghost Whisperer) fit perfectly together and are supported by Ryan Phillippe (Crash, Breach, Flags of Our Fathers) and Freddie Prinze Jr. Why does that sentence sound naughty? If I had to watch one film of this type, I'm glad this was it.

"I Know What You Did Last Summer" joins "The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" as being yet another film that doesn't even come close to living up to its inspired title. All are bad enough to make me angry at the thought of a good title being squandered.

Kevin Williamson's script suggests nothing so much as a man trying, and failing, to capture the charm of the first couple of seasons of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" - this is more obviously a good description of "Scream", but "Scream", and this may surprise some people who've seen it, is better. -Or maybe he wasn't even trying. I'm not sure which is worse. I think Williamson WAS trying for a quality we might term "cred", by having his central characters bitch and squabble all the time. Friends in "Buffy", on the other hand, genuinely support one another. That's a large part of the show's charm. It's a charm that could only have helped Williamson's script, if only by making it more realistic: however much his central characters might have fought amongst themselves in the ordinary course of events, faced with a powerful EXTERNAL threat, they would surely have closed ranks.

Neither this nor "Scream" is particularly bad. The main trouble is that "I Know What You Did Last Summer", as well as wasting a good title, also wastes a good premise. Some teenagers feel guilty after their car accidentally knocks someone down; they hide the body and then they THINK they can just safely sneak back to their old lives ... the story could have gone in many good directions from here, and it's a pity all that occurred to Williamson was to head for regions slasher-horror so well travelled I'm surprised they don't sell souvenirs.