Review: I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

I STILL KNOW…THIS FRANCHISE SUCKS

 (reviewed on ppv Monday, June 14th, 1999)

    Jennifer Love Hewitt is back, cleavage and all, and so is the hook weilding maniac psycho who only knows one thing: revenge! He’s tortured her soul, killed her friends, and can’t wait to desembowel her and watch her scream! He is the insane fisherman! He is…BEN WILLIS!
    Pretty anti-climatic, right? That’s what I was thinking when in the original “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, they unmask the killer to find out it’s some old man who looks like a hermit. Yeah, Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers had pretty dumb names too, but at least they wore masks and/or had knives for fingers. Ben Willis is just a dorky old senior citizen who looks about as scary as the local Police Chief in Any Town, USA.
    Other than that, the first film wasn’t half bad. It was entertaining, and with Sarah Michelle Gellar strutting around I at least had some eye candy to keep me busy. Plus, the ending was so cool when the killer jumps through that sauna mirror ready to slice-and-dice and then the credits hit the screen. Whoa…can’t fucking wait for the sequel.
    It’s with some deep regret that I knew the sequel, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer”, would blow, because the climax of the first film was merely a dream. Come on! Why couldn’t you start the film off in the shower? You could have a massive, violent bloodbath/fight scene with Julie swinging shards of glass trying to stop the madman.
    I guess it made more ‘sense’ to whomever wrote this disaster of a script. Kevin Williamson wrote the first film’s script, and it was basic but it worked. It of course helped that it was based on a decent teen book. This new film was apparently based on some hack screenwriter’s bogus idea to put Hewitt on a deserted island in the middle of a tropical storm with Ben Willis.
    Where’s the next sequel’s setting going to be? On the moon? I can almost read the tag-line now: She was pushed so far…she had to escape to the most outer reaches of man…I STILL KNOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT I DID THREE SUMMERS AGO!
    Jennifer Love Hewitt is Julie James. Julie James is a college student living with Brandy. They win a radio promotion trip to some tropical island on the Fourth of July weekend. They have four tickets so Brandy gets her boyfriend and his friend to go. Brandy’s boy-toy is “Clockers” own Mekhi Phifer, the only good actor in the film. Maybe it helped that he didn’t grow up an actor or in Hollywood. He acts real, he acts smart, he acts like you and I would in this kind of situation (not that you and I would ever be stuck on an island being chased by a fisherman with a hook, but you get the idea).
    So the foursome go to this island in the middle of nowhere and find out that they are the only tourists on the island. There’s the hotel owner who happens to be a bastard, a stoner pool boy with dreadlocks, a Courtney Love looking bar keep, an old black dude who practices Voodoo, a Spanish maid, and another Hotel worker who ties the boats up at night. If you’re a rookie at slasher films, I’ll spell it out for you. These characters are nothing more than V-I-C-T-I-M-S.
    And so a big, bad, vicious storm brews onto the island and it’s survival of the…er…characters of the first film? I won’t ruin it for you, but I will heed you with these immortal words: the director of this made “Judge Dredd”! *