I
Know What You
Did Last Summer |
DIRECTOR
Jim Gillespie
SCREENWRITER
Kevin Williamson
based
on the novel by
Lois Duncan
PRODUCERS
Stokely Chaffin
Erik Feig
Neal H. Moritz
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Denis Crossan
MUSIC
John Debney
EDITOR
Steve Mirkovich
CAST
Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie)
Sarah Michelle Gellar (Helen)
Ryan Phillippe (Barry)
Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray)
Bridgette Wilson (Elsa)
Anne Heche (Missy)
Johnny Galecki (Max)
Muse Watson (Benjamin Willis)
Patti D'Arbanville (Mrs. Shivers)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 100m
U.S. release: October 17, 1997
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Kevin
Williamson films
reviewed on this site:
- The
Faculty (script)
- Scream
(script)
- Scream
2 (script)
- Teaching
Mrs. Tingle (director, script)
|
The
dark side of the horror genre is that when a horror movie crosses
over and makes big money -- The
Exorcist, Halloween,
A Nightmare on Elm Street -- a wave of inferior rip-offs
is never far behind. Well, once again, studio execs have sat
up and taken notice: "Hey! Scream
made $100 million! Let's make a slasher movie!" The first
one out of the box, I Know What You Did Last Summer, is
particularly disappointing because it was written by Kevin Williamson,
who scripted Scream, and who, I thought, was much smarter
than this. Scream was a clever slasher-film parody that
played by the rules of the subgenre while affectionately ribbing
those same rules. Last Summer just plays by the rules
-- boringly, predictably so.
The film is based on Lois Duncan's dated, poorly written young-adult
novel from 1974 (sample dialogue: "Of all the dumb tricks!
The guy must be off his nut"). Williamson has altered the
plot while keeping the basic premise. Four high-school stereotypes
-- beauty queen Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), straight-A student
Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), jock Barry (Ryan Phillippe), and
working-class outsider Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) -- are out driving
when they run over a shadowy figure. The kids panic and dump
the body into the nearby ocean, making a pact never to talk about
the incident. Then, one year later, Julie gets a mysterious note
that reads -- well, check the title.
At this point, Last Summer turns into a depressingly routine
slasher film. A figure called the Fisherman, dressed in a black
slicker and wielding a hook, goes around terrorizing the kids.
Does he want to scare a confession out of them, or does he just
want to kill them? The latter, I'm afraid. But while we wait,
Williamson tosses in many red herrings -- who just turn out to
be Fisherman fodder. The big question on the kids' minds, and
on ours, is: Who's doing this and why? The final explanation
is disastrously anti-climactic, especially coming from the writer
who threw us a few diabolical twists and curves in Scream.
Director Jim Gillespie is no Wes Craven. He doesn't know how
to use the wide screen (it's a waste of Panavision), and he gets
no help from his actors. Phillippe and Prinze lack the quirkiness
of the horror-obsessed geeks in Scream; they're generic
Fox-TV hunks. Gellar, the vibrant star of TV's Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, is bland here; she's too smart and likable to be
credible as the snotty, shallow Helen. (Charisma Carpenter, who
plays the self-absorbed Cordelia on Buffy, would have
been more like it. Gellar was originally up for the role of Cordelia,
and here she demonstrates how wrong she would've been for the
part.) Hewitt, of Party of Five, fares better with the
brooding, guilt-stricken Julie, but she's too obviously being
groomed as the next Neve Campbell. Only Anne Heche, stealing
her two scenes as a lonely backwoods woman, makes an impression.
Williamson is a native of the North Carolina fishing community,
where the movie is set. There are a few atmospheric scenes and
touches of local color, but even though the film was shot on
location, the place feels like the same suburban wherever I've
seen in a hundred slasher movies. Despite the open ending and
Columbia's hunger for a franchise, I doubt that the Fisherman
will catch on as an enduring icon of fear to match Michael Myers,
Freddy, Jason, or even Scream's Munch-faced killer. The
movie could have been a small paranoid classic, a smart teen
rendition of Hitchcock, set in a specific locale with living,
breathing people we could care about. Instead, it's the kind
of anemic gore-fest that killed the genre fifteen years ago.
Kevin Williamson, what were you thinking? |
